To briefly review recent news: Microsoft is going to allow advertisers to set a “cashback” reward to consumers for purchases that originate from ads on Microsoft Live Search.
Think about the quality of companies that currently incentivize users to participate in advertising:

AllAdvantage
InboxDollars
ClixSense
Bux.to

Microsoft should be embarrassed to join that list of companies.
Some naysayers might argue that the [...]

Google launched online health records. I was instantly reminded of the movie Gattaca. Gattaca took a pessimistic tone towards the nature vs nurture argument, assuming that everyone has an upper-limit to his potential for success predefined by his genes. In the movie corporations used this information to select the “most qualified candidates.” [...]

Mark Cuban writes in his post “Beating Google” that one way to beat Google is to pay the owners of sites in the top 5 slots of the results page for the most popular keywords to remove their sites from the Google index. Thus, Microsoft (or Yahoo or a new competitor) could claim [...]

I launched TwitterSnooze informally late Monday of last week, so I thought I’d write a quick post with one week worth of stats. When I first launched the script, I thought I would wait a month before writing a post about usage, but I can see now that, based on the current usage rate, [...]

I’ve noticed an increase in the number of spammy companies, random websites, and unrealistically endowed women following me on Twitter. It’s a simple form of spam: by following me on Twitter, spammers know that Twitter will send me an email with a link to their Twitter user account, which will encourage me to click [...]

Are you asking this question? If so, then take two and a half minutes to watch this video:
Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Fred Wilson recently wrote about the declining power of firms. Fred argues that the internet has reduced the costs of transacting with a market so significantly that the nature of firms (as outline by Ronald Coase) must change as well. I totally agree with this argument on an intuitive level. I see this [...]

Google announced a game-changing hosted platform for application development last night. Our initial enthusiasm at Union Square Ventures about this platform is captured by Albert over on our blog. I’m trying to tease out initial limitations in order to wrap my brain around the implications of this offering. Any insights would be much [...]

This is a crime against all that is cardinal-colored. Mike Montgomery, legendary ex-Stanford basketball coach, just signed on to coach Cal! Seriously? How is this not some belated April Fools joke?
The Trent vs Monty games over the next few years are going to be epic… better than the Lute vs Monty [...]