facebook
SocialMedia is an ad network that partners with Facebook widgetmakers and serves ads to their users. It decides which ads to serve based on information those users agree to release to widgetmakers when installing their apps —
information like who they're friends with and how they interact with them on Facebook. Also using that information, SocialMedia sometimes puts the faces of users' friends in the ads, calling these ads "Social banners." So far these ads appear only in widgets themselves, but they could be distributed across the Internet. We're not concerned about the privacy issues, because they're boring and for old people who might not even list themselves in the white pages, let alone overshare like a good millenial. We do wonder, however, if SocialMedia will make money.
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comebacks
Seth Goldstein, the former Silicon Alley stalwart now stationed in suburban-quaint Mill Valley, Calif., has
raised $3.5 million in Series A funding for SocialMedia, his Facebook-application startup. Among SocialMedia's works: the Food Fight and Trakzor widgets. Charles River Ventures lead the investment with SoftTech's Jeff Clavier and Ning cofounder Marc Andreessen (!) participating. Wait a minute,
that Seth Goldstein? The ex-VC who brought infamous delivery dotbomb Kozmo to Flatiron Ventures? The guy who, last we heard, was working on
AttenTV and other attention-focused ventures?
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seth goldstein
It's fitting, really, that the baseball game chosen by failed entrepreneur Seth Goldstein in
his new metaphor for startup success is Curt Schilling's near no-hitter. The Red Sox pitcher let one batter from the A's get a hit in the ninth with just
one out to go. If only Goldstein's ventures (such as the incomprehensible startup
AttenTV or the confusing seller exchange by Goldstein's
Root Markets) came so close to success. After all, Curt's team still won the game. But if Seth really understood the four points he gleaned from Curt's near miss (Throw strikes, trust your defense, listen to your catcher, and pitch don't throw), why hasn't his startup wisdom translated into a company that makes money — or even gets sold on time?
attention trust
NICK DOUGLAS — As I sit here in a sunny San Francisco cafe, bored with the fire-eating buskers and queer nuns that crowd my city, my mind wanders to the heady days I once spent at the cubicle farm, standing behind a co-worker and watching them browse the internet. Now that's excitement! Keep your strippers and performance artists and give me the three seconds' thrill of anticipation between each click of a link and the subsequent page load! If only, I always thought, I could recreate this experience at home, so I could watch people fritter away their time
all day. This, dear readers, is why I am so disappointed to be banned from Attentrust's
AttenTV, which lets an Internet user — wait for it — WATCH WHAT PEOPLE ARE WATCHING.
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Valleywag
