Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple,  unveils iPhone 3G today, the App Store, MobileMe, and more in his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address. the iPhone 3G will be released July 11th. It will be twice as fast as the current iPhone, have a longer battery life, GPS, and will cost only $199 in the US, with a $200 subsidy from AT&T.  According to Gizmodo:

“Apple has accepted that the new iPhone should be subsidised in the US and western Europe by the mobile operators who sell it to consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.”

To watch the keynote address, click here.

In this month’s Marker Magazine you’ll find an article entitled “The Startups Dream Team” - this is a list of the top 40 industry experts you want in your startup to ensure its success. In this list you will find yours truly as the top expert in social networks and marketing within social platforms. Others included in the list: Ofer Adler from Incredimail, Alex Sirota from Foxytunes, and Yaniv Golan from Yedda. Here’s the link to the online abbreviated version of the article in Hebrew.

Also in the same magazine, you’ll find me featured in another article entitled “The Entrepreneurs Talk”. This was a great initiative organized by The Marker Magazine. About a month ago they had invited 6 of us to a “round the table discussion” about entrepreneurship and the Web. The 6 invited entrepreneurs were: Ofer Adler, Haggai Shachar from Nuconomy, Ariel Napchi from Hiro, Hagit Halperin from Sequr. Alon Maimoni from Viral Gurus, and myself. We spoke about the differences between angels and VC’s, how the political situation in Israel affects our industry, tips for newbie entrepreneurs, proudest moments in our careers, revenue models, and much more. I really enjoyed this gathering and applaud The Marker for this wonderful initiative.

Technorati tags: blonde20, blonde 2.0, the marker, startups, experts, social marketing, social networks, ofer adler, alex sirota, yaniv golan, entreprenuers, entrepreneurship, web, haggai shachar, ariel napchi, hagit halperin, alon maimoni

Nick O’Neill has recently interviewed Mark Zuckerberg (in a slightly different manner than Sarah Lacy). Here’s what Mark had to say:

1) He believes the reaction to his interview with Sarah Lacy was overblown.

2) Mark claims that the 5,000 friend limit on Facebook is more of a technical limitation than anything else and even though users have been complaining about this, it is not something they plan on changing any time soon. However Nick adds:

“I received a different response from one Facebook employee later that night who claimed that it would only be a few lines of code to change. I’m sure there is more to it than that but it definitely is not a high priority at Facebook currently.”

3) Mark claims that Facebook does not want to compete with other application developers. However, this still didn’t stop them from sending out a message to thousands (if not millions) of college students recently telling them to install the March Madness application. Over the last few years, CBS and Facebook had worked together in creating and promoting this application. The fact that Facebook is not allowing other developers the same promotional capability for their applications is angering many developers and justly so. When asked about this controversial issue, Mark mentioned that this year they had actually messaged less users than in previous years.

4) Mark mentioned that he is focusing on building the Company for scale and will in the future place more of his responsibilities on others.

5) Mark thinks that in the future, the social web will move away from social networks and many of the new applications will move outside of Facebook.

6) When asked whether he would take a proactive role in fighting anti-semitism on Facebook, Mark said that rather than fighting hate movements on Facebook, the Company intends to continue focusing on providing useful communication tools allowing users to connect and discover new worldly perspectives.

7) Mark emphasized that Facebook’s aim is to create the most accurate representation of our “social graph.” However, as Nick points out:

“There’s only one problem with Facebook’s attempt so far though: all our interactions don’t take place within Facebook. We send instant messages to our friends, send at replies on Twitter, have telephone conversations and exchange emails. All of these things help construct the summation of our interpersonal communication.”

Mark agrees that Facebook needs to improve its messaging system and says that the Company will be focusing on providing new tools to users in regards to messaging. In fact, three days ago Michael Arrington reported that Facebook was launching a new instant messaging service and it will be available to the public soon, perhaps in the next week. Michael writes:

“I’m now hearing that this won’t be Jabber-compliant, at least at first. That means access will be Facebook only unless they create an API and/or third parties figure out a way to hack into the service as they’ve done with Yahoo, MSN and AIM in the past.”

8 ) Mark believes that the viralness is done for many Facebook applications and that the Company needs to incentivize differently in the future. Instead of a good application being one that has a lot of users, there will be other incentives. No further elaboration was given but Mark did mention that the system for deciding which are “good applications” would be automated.

As all of you know, I love Facebook but frankly I was a bit disappointed by some of Mark’s answers. For example, the fact that Facebook does not allow all applications an even playing field is quite disturbing to me. In addition, the fact that users are complaining about Facebook limitations and not receiving a response is not right either. It does however seem that Facebook will be providing more communication tools in the future and enabling users to more easily find “good apps” amongst the thousands of apps currently being offered, which is definitely something to look forward to.

Technorati tags: interview, mark zuckerberg, nick o’neill, sarah lacy, facebook, applications, developers, march maddness, cbs, social web, social networks, anti-semitism, communication tools, social graph, twitter, messaging, instant messaging, michael Arrington

An article was published about Blonde 2.0 today in:

The Marker, the leading business magazine in Israel.

Click here to read the full article in Hebrew.

Technorati tags: blonde 2.0, blonde2dot0, the marker, business, article

Here are some hilarious negotiating tips for Yang & Co. from 5min’s famous Shpigler:

The Pew Research Center has recently come out with its “Internet’s Broader Role in Campaign 2008” report. This report’s findings are based on the results of a survey the Center conducted in December 2007 amongst 1430 American adults. The data is fascinating and I wanted to share of its most intriguing findings with you.

Summary of Findings:

1) The internet is becoming one of the leading sources for news about the presidential campaign for all Americans. 24% of Americans say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from respondents in the 2004 campaign (13%) and almost triple the percentage found in the 2000 campaign (9%).

2) The internet has become a leading source of campaign news for young Americans. 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet. In 2004, only 20% of this demographic group said that they got such news from the internet. 

An interesting side note, since young Americans find their campaign news online as opposed to older Americans who are more likely to receive their news from traditional sources, it’s definitely worth examining how these trends may affect the different age groups’ voting decisions and opinions.

3) Amongst those Americans who rely on the internet for their news, MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News are the most popular sites. However, it’s interesting to note that 3% turn to MySpace and 2% turn to YouTube. Roughly four-in-ten people under age 30 (41%) have watched at least one campaign video online, compared with 20% of those ages 30 and older.

4) 27% of Americans younger than age 30 – including 37% of those ages 18-24 – have said that they received campaign news from social networking sites. This fact is true only when we look at the young demographic; 4% of Americans in their 30s, and 1% of those ages 40 and older, have received information about the campaign in this manner.

I know I have received quite a good deal of news regarding the different candidates on Twitter and Facebook. Barack Obama’s people have done an amazing branding job online.

TV Still #1 Information Source But Slipping

26% of Americans mention the internet either first or second as their main source of election news. Among young Americans, the internet is gaining popularity as a main source for election news while television is losing its popularity. In 2004, 75% of those ages 18 to 29 cited television and only 21% cited the internet as their main source for campaign news. Today those numbers have changed. 60% of this age group cite Television and 46% cite the internet as their primary source for election news.

Top Three Election News Sites and the Long Tail

While 54% of American users get their campaign news from MSNBC, CNN and Yahoo, there is also a very long tail of other such online sources. While only 13 individual websites were named by 1% or more of the people who get campaign news online, hundreds of individual websites were named by fewer than 1%.

29% of those Americans who get news online cite one of these smaller websites as a source of campaign information. This means that for every person getting campaign news from a site like MSNBC, there is a person getting campaign news from one of these long tail websites. Such websites may represent local newspapers, TV stations and radio stations sites. However, according to the findings, a large percentage of these sites are internet news sites – politically oriented or otherwise.

Perhaps many of these sites are political blogs written by citizens. It would be interesting to examine how the emergence of such blogs has changed the way we view politics and what kind of effect this has had on our political opinions and voting decisions.

Younger Americans cite more election information sources than older Americans. MySpace is cited by 8% of the 18-29 age group, less than 1% of those ages 30 and over, and the pattern for YouTube is almost identical.

Online Campaign Activities

As we have seen, all the candidates used the Web in order to communicate their political messages to the public.

About one-in-six Americans (16%) have sent or received emails with friends and family regarding candidates and the campaign, and 14% have received email messages from political groups or organizations about the campaign.

Most candidates also used social networks to communicate with their audiences.

Social Networking Sites

Since about one-in-five Americans (22%) (and two-thirds of Americans ages 18-29) is a member in an online social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook, candidates needed to use such networks to deliver their messages to the public. These findings emphasize the relevance and strength of such online communities.

27% of younger Americans (including 37% of those ages 18-24) say that they have received information about candidates and the campaign from them on social networking sites. Nearly one-in-ten of people under age 30 (8%) say that they have become a friend of one of the candidates on a site. The numbers are even higher for each of these activities amongst young registered voters.

Older voters have been found to be less politically active on social networks. About one-in-five Americans ages 30-39 (21%) use social networking sites, but just 4% in this age group say that they have received campaign information from those sites; 3% have become friends with a candidate.

The Strength of Online Videos

Online videos have played a huge part in this election campaign. 24% of Americans say they have seen either a speech, interview, commercial, or debate online. 41% of those under age 30 have viewed some sort of video online. The percentage goes down as the age groups get older, but even amongst those ages 65 and older, 7% have seen an election video online.

Views of Political Bias on the Web

13% of web users say there are more news websites and blogs that favor the Democrats, while 6% of users say more sites favor the Republicans. However the general view (45%) is that there about equal numbers of news and opinion websites on both sides.
Since 36% of web users didn’t even respond to the question, it seems that about 81% don’t perceive of any general political tilt on the internet. These same findings were found amongst those respondents who get most of their campaign news online.

It’s good to see that people, especially those who use the internet as their main news source, feel that they get an equal amount of information on the Web regarding both sides. This presents the Web as an increasingly relevant source of news.  

Overall I think these findings show the increasing importance of the Web as a news source and the significance of social sites as a tool for politicians to deliver their messages to the public. There is incredible power vested within sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. When making voting decisions, people will take into account how the candidates are represented on each of these platforms. To illustrate this point, the findings even tell the story of Senator George Allen who had lost the the 2006 race for the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia due to a YouTube video which circulated at the time showing him mocking an Indian-American campaign worker. Today we are able to receive more news from more sources than ever before and hopefully this should also allow us to make more calculated and intelligent voting decisions.

The industry and media hyped up the iPhone like no other gadget in modern history. Last week, when the product hit the shelves, shoppers ran to purchase and stood in lines for hours. Frankly, I must say I am a bit puzzled.

As Aner Ravon writes:

The iPhone is supposed to change the industry, yet it uses yesterday’s technology.

1. EDGE is a different name for horrible browsing experience. The only equivalent I can think of is a scooter engine trying to pull a Rolls Royce.

2. Side-loading only? You mean I need to connect my phone to the PC again? wasn’t it all about mobility?

3. Camera without zooming? Are we back in 2003 and nobody told me?

Jeff Pulver adds:

When I heard that in the United States in order to use an Apple iPhone I also had to be a subscriber to AT&T Wireless, I said No! It is not that T-Mobile has the best coverage (or the best service) but in principal, I am not in favor of any vendor whose device is locked into a certain service provider. What ever happened to my freedom of choice? I hope AT&T is paying Apple enough money to cover all of the sales they are losing from customers who have relationships on other carrier networks who would have also purchased the device if the AT&T phone service wasn’t a requirement.

What’s your take on the iPhone? Regardless of all the criticism, I must say that Steve Jobs and Apple have done an amazing job in marketing their product, so hats off to them for that.

Thanks to Andy for the pic.

Technorati tags: iphone, aner ravon, jeff pulver, apple, at&t, t-mobile, steve jobs

As a follow up to my earlier post entitled “what does community mean to you?”, it is interesting to see how social networking sites and blogs helped the Virginia Tech community communicate during the shootings. InformationWeek reported that day: “Virginia Tech students and staff reported on what appeared to be the deadliest shooting on a U.S. college campus as it unfolded, using blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, and cell phones to do it…A student captured the sound of several gunshots on campus.”

You can see some of the blog entries posted during the time of the shooting on CollegeMedia.com, the website of the publisher of Virginia Tech’s campus newspaper. Cybersoc.com has rounded up a few shocking first hand accounts from bloggers on the traumatic events, as well as Boing Boing which also has a roundup of first-hand coverage that includes Flickr photos of police cars on the scene.

Dan Gillmor from Center for Citizen Media Blog writes: “More and more major news stories will be amplified in this way. Spot news will be, in part, a citizen-captured phenomenon, and there’s no going back.”

I think that news events being covered by citizens in this format is definitely the wave of the future and this will allow us all to further understand the power of these social tools and to record events in a more truthful and accurate manner.

Thanks to Kevin Cupp for the pic.

Technorati tags: blogs, cell phones, virginia tech, shootings, community, social networking, informationweek, podcasts, collegemedia, cybersoc, boingboing, flickr, dan gillmor, center for citizen media, news