The Pivot conference is revving up again, scheduled to hit the Big Apple on the 17^th – 19^th of October, 2010. If you have anything to do with the marketing sweet spot of 18 – 34 year old generation ‘T’ (Techies), then you should definitely consider stopping by.

Why?  5 reasons for you:

Reason 1- First off, Pivot is the premiere brouhaha where ad agencies and brand marketers gather to discuss the styles, attitudes, preferences and technologies of said age bracket. Let’s face it, the trends in this marketing demographic change faster than Facebook’s privacy settings. So if you want any form of a heads up about what was, what is and what will be, for the hipsters of hi-tech, PIVOT’s a good place to start.

Reason 2- Need we mention that the fastest growing industry on the web is social media, and still, SM giants like Facebook and Twitter have yet to monetize themselves to the point of profitability (poor guys). Pretty much all of them are primarily looking toward advertising models to turn that around and reach projected revenue marks in the tens of billions. It’s probably a good idea then to hear from the proverbial horse’s mouth (i.e. The ad and marketing industry) exactly what kind of models we can expect to see being used to hit these mammoth numbers.

Reason 3-Then there’s social gaming. One of the hottest sub-sectors of of social media today. If there is one thing that has effectively lobotomized the greatest minds of business school theorists, it’s the meteoric rise of social gaming. No one could have predicted just how popular it would become, but people like Evan Cohen, GM of Foursquare and scheduled speaker at Pivot, are probably your best bet for the inside scoop on where social gaming is going. Which brings us to reason #4.

Reason 4- Some of the most qualified names in the industry are going to give their take on the above issues and more, including (but not limited to):

• Brian Solis, Founder, FutureWorks
• Samir Arora, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Glam Media
• Evan Cohen, General Manager, Foursquare
• Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice
• Esther Dyson, Founder, EDVenture Holdings
• Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing Search (Microsoft)
• Scott K. Wilder, GM Communities, Intuit
• Michelle Bonat, CEO, RumbaFish
• Wendy Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction

How many reasons is that so far, 4? What was that last one? Oh yeah:

Reason 5- Blonde Readers will receive a 20% discount when you register with this promo code:

T2BAP201

Why? Because we’re awesome and we take care of our own. Stick with us kid, and life will be good.

So in conclusion, if you want to be on the dishing out end of being able to say to your friends “That’s so five minutes ago” instead of on the receiving end – and if you’re between semi to very cool … Then make sure you’re at PIVOT.

It’s official: AOL and Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST), one of the largest Internet companies in the world announced just now that they have reached an agreement for DST to acquire ICQ.

There have been rumors spreading for a while now regarding the acquisition of ICQ by various sources, however, now it’s official.  Tim Armstrong CEO and Chairman of AOL said: ““As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we’re fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST…. DST a leading innovator in the Internet investment space and has a significant presence in the markets where ICQ is strong.”

A few words about DST: Founded in 2005, DST is one of the leading investment groups globally to exclusively focus on Internet related companies. DST, together with its affiliate DST Global, also hold stakes in major Internet world leaders such as Facebook, Zynga, and now ICQ.

ICQ has played an integral part in my life as I am sure in the lives of many others. I was one of the first users of the program, I also served as ICQ’s Marketing Manager for 4 years from 2002-2006, and now, Blonde 2.0 manages all of ICQ’s social media activities. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate ICQ and wish it much luck on its new path.

Last month we launched our Skype contest and announced that we would give out Skype Buddy Kits to the five people who could give us the best answer to the following question: “What Social Feature Are You Missing in Skype?” We wanted to share with you some of the best answers we received:

1) Roy Rubin feels that what is missing in Skype is “better integration with other social media services. Skype should have a much stronger user’s profile page, with links to twitter and FB for example.”

2) Anat Eshel wishes there was Skype share – the abillity to share part of the chat on social networks, such as facebook or twitter.

3) Doron Sanders suggests that Skype add a Chatroulette feature that will allow you to talk to random people on Camera.

4) Ilan Yogev simply wants a “e-hugging” feature.

5) Oren Todoros would love if Skype had a “Record and Podcast It” button. He wants a feature that would allow him to record the conversation (video or voice) and enable him to publish it straight to his blog, hassle free.

6) Benyamin Shoham would like to be able to add his friends from other IM services to skype: Import friends from Gtalk, Facebook chat, twitter etc. and show which of his contacts has skype.

7) Ted Russ suggests: “I’d love for selected people to be able to message me on Skype and have it sent to my mobile phone.”

8 ) Jesper Åström adds: “I am missing the feature of “Person x is currently talking to person y”. I would like to have a “Join this conversation” button and a “Private conversation” button for those convos that aren’t open. Perhaps a bit intrusive, but highly social. That way people would “hang” on Skype for longer periods of time, just random…”

9) Nir Soffer would love to be able to preselect certain groups (Friends, Family, Work, etc.) and have the capability to assign different statuses to each group (busy to work, invisible to family, online to friends), assign different forwarding numbers to each group (have a work phone, family phone, etc.) and assign a different SkypeIn number for each group. He would also love to be able message the entire group.

10) Skype’s lack of integration with other social networks was the most popular answer. As Jonathan Ross comically expressed: “There are times u just want to be able to see all your evil henchmen and collaborate via video on your latest project for world domination, (or is that antisocial media?) It would make it infinitely easier if Skype connected my Twitter contacts/ friends/ followers.”

We enjoyed reading all your creative answers and will make sure to deliver this feedback to Skype. You might just see some of these ideas integrated in Skype’s next version.

So with no further ado, the winners of our contest are…..(drumroll):

1) Doron Sanders

2) Jonathan Ross

3) Ilan Yogev

4) Oren Todoros

5) Jesper Åström

Congratz to the winners! Thanks to everyone who participated from Buddy, Skype and the Blonde 2.0 Team.

I will contact the 5 winners via Facebook and get your shipping details so that I can get Buddy on his way to you.

On March 15th I organized a crowdsourcing session at the famous GarageGeeks venue in Israel. We had different companies presenting their concept of crowdsourcing to us and showing us how they utilize crowdsourcing in their own companies. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here are some highlights from the night in the videos below. Please note that the videos are in Hebrew.

Hope you enjoy them!

1st video - Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest:

2nd video - Yael Elish, VP Product & Social Media Marketing at Waze:

3rd video - Yaniv Golan, Co-Founder & CTO, Yedda discussing what happens when the participating crowds have their own opinion about what your service should be like:

Next Monday, March 15th I am organizing a crowdsourcing session at the famous GarageGeeks venue in Israel. We have four different companies presenting their own view of what crowdsourcing is all about and how they utilize crowdsourcing in their own companies.

We have four speakers:

Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest - Doron will discuss how online communities are disrupting many industries; will compare the differences between a mob, a crowd and a community; will provide a sneak preview of a live demo of a not-yet-launched version of uTest’s software testing platform.

Yael Elish, VP Product & Social Media Marketing, founder of Waze –  Yael will discuss CrowdSourcing and the use of social and gaming elements to engage users to build a viable service and reach critical mass.

Yaniv Golan, Co-Founder & CTO,  Yedda –  Yaniv will discuss CrowdSourcing and the First Thumbs War – as a creator of a Web service, you’d love to have the crowds breathe life into your service through participation. Yet, what happens when the participating crowds have their own opinion about what your service should be like?

Dan Rimon, Co-Founder,  AllRise - AllRise is an online public courthouse where users can sue anyone and charge them with anything. The crowd debates the case and the crowed decides the verdict. Dan will present how they came up with the idea of AllRise and show examples of some cases that were opened.

We’ve also got a special surprise for you – an iPhone app that will make its special debut during this night showing us geeks (even Blonde geeks) how to maximize our networking skills with the crowd around us.

Please confirm your attendance on the Facebook event page and don’t forget to BYOB (or BYOW for that matter) Sharing is caring

See u all there!

Often time when I am traveling abroad, people ask me: “Why does Israel have so many startups? What is it about Israel that makes it so innovative and strong in the hi-tech industry?” Saul Singer together with Dan Senor have researched that question and have written a whole book about it. They believe the Israeli model can be copied elsewhere in less innovative regions and that other nations have much to learn from Start-Up Nation.

Here’s my interview with Saul at JVP’s Medialectica 2010 event:

Last month I had the honor of organizing Medialectica 2010 event together with JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners). The concept of the event was a simple one: Allow entrepreneurs to network and also set up one on one meetings with any of the event’s sponsors: IBM, france telecom, Publicis [Incubator] and of course JVP. At the event entrepreneurs had the chance to pitch their companies to the mentioned sponsors and get their feedback and advice. The first speech of the event was given by Erel Margalit, Founder and Managing Partner of JVP who told startups: “We Do Early Stage Now”.
In this speech, Erel discusses how he sees the future of startups, innovation and opens the door for early stage startups to approach JVP even at a time when other VCs may be closing their doors.

See the full speech in the video below:

Yesterday I attended Jeff Pulver‘s 140 Conference in Tel Aviv. I really enjoyed @thekotel‘s presentation which unfortunately I didn’t film but go to the twitter profile and check it out. Alon Nir is doing a remarkable job there.

The lecture I enjoyed in particular was Yaniv Golan’s (CTO of Yedda)  “The 140-characters Netscape” where he stated:

“I believe that in 2 years the Twitter brand will be in the same position as the Netscape brand is in now: Twitter will be credited with starting the revolution, and paving the road for followers (pun intended). But at the same time, it will be pushed into a minor position in the market with other players taking the lead (or, as is the case with Netscape, will no longer exist).”

It’s an interesting position and definitely a realistic one. What do you think? Do you see each of the big players creating their own twitter-like services? Do you believe like Yaniv that twitter should switch to a wordpress type model? Check out the video below.

I was invited yesterday morning to the Biz Stone press conference hosted by the College of Management . For me personally it was very exciting to meet one of the founders of the social platform that I love and admire the most. Biz didn’t surprise us with any new acquisition in Israel but mostly talked about the role that twitter has been playing until now and what the future holds for twitter. He did mention that 2010 is the year that twitter will start making real money.

For everyone who wanted to be there, but couldn’t, don’t say i didn’t think of you…here’s the video (separated into two due to Youtube limitations):

Universal Music Publishing is the #1 music publisher in the world. I shot a short video clip of David Renzer, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing, when he was visiting us at Garage Geeks. In this video he discusses the exciting activities that are coming up in his company – including a Los Angeles/Tel-Aviv partnership that was created in order to promote cross cultural projects. Universal Music specializes in copyrighting of artists’ songs, and they represent some of the biggest artists in the world – including U2, Coldplay and Eminem. Universal Music’s job is to protect rights of their music artists and to help their songs get publicity in films and television. In this short video clip, watch how David Renzer really educates the crowd about the proper licensing of music rights, as he admits this is not a simple task. Watch at the end as Ran Geffen provides his “2cents” on the ultimate goal of copyrighting.