awesomize.me: The First Business Intelligence Report Leveraging the Power of Rating and Community

In today’s environment, the easiest question to ask and sometimes the hardest to answer is “What’s the ROI?”  It is so commonplace that some people even use “ROI” as a metric in their personal lives! But I digress.  What I am really trying to tell you is that almost any good marketer or media person knows that you need analytics to measure the effectiveness of your strategies and tactics.  At a minimum, we all want to know who’s the coolest kid on the block or what is the new “it” thing.  So without further adieu, I give you  Awesome Analytics  – our first business intelligence report.

Our preview version of Awesome Analytics easily shows you the most awesome folks in 5 market segments –  people, company, product, service, and question categories searched and viewed on awesomize.me. Below is our November’s Awesome Analytics. You can click on each link to see the top people, companies, products, services, and questions awesomzied (rated) by the community for each category.

The New Sheriff of Washington DC Is In, So Are the Washingtonian Entrepreneurs

The Good looking one is me, Jamey is the other one

I am very excited to announce my involvement with the Technology Business Innovation Taskforce of the incoming DC mayor, Vince Gray. The task force is being co-chaired by my awesome entrepreneur friend, Jamey Harvey, CEO of another exciting DC startup, Sponto.

I think that this will be a good opportunity for me as I try to help tackle some of the problems that I’ve been bitching about, from an entrepreneur’s perspective for the DC area. I hope my participation to the team brings me closer to my goal in positioning Awesome Washington, DC as a technology hub.

The Technology Business Innovation Taskforce will focus on attracting and retaining technology companies from these and other high growth industries:

• Alternative Energy
• Health Care
• Cyber Security
• Internet/Software/Social Media
• Optics
• Mobile
• Gov 2.0 service providers
  

How the Internet was Used in 2010

The recent study by Pew Internet on 2,252 adults, aged 18 and older clearly shows that the older generations are catching up with younger internet users in using the Internet this year.

What’s most interesting to me, is the usage of email vs.  blogs. The color coordinated spreadsheet suggests that 10-19% of everyone aged 18-64 are blogging. That is an enormous number of people *generating* online content, as opposed to merely consuming it.  Indeed,”Blogging” is the only content-creation activity listed.

The Hilarious Jon Stewart on Net Neutrality

Glad to see Jon Stewart is also on the same page on Net Neutrality. If you are new to the subject, I suggest you read my last coverage on the it before watching the segment below.

What’s happening to the Telecom Jobs?

I thought the boom in Internet was supposed to translate to more jobs in IT and Telecom space. I guess not.

The telecommunications sector lost nearly 50,000 jobs since July of last year, including 5,800 jobs lost just last month alone. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 919,400 jobs in the sector in July.

The computer and electronics products segment remained flat month over month, increasing 1,100 jobs, but still down 23,800 jobs from the year-ago period to an overall job count of 1.1 million jobs. Most of the nearly 24,000 job losses from July 2009 to July 2010 came from the electronics instruments sub-category.

Women on the Web: How Women Shaping the Internet

A new report by comScore titled  “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” shows more women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.

Frankly, I am not surprised, women do pretty much the same things whatever communication tools you give them, whether it’s phone, TV, or the internet, they use it to talk to each other, look for deals, follow celebrity gossips etc.

Web Makes Babes Happier

I just read a new research study that made me feel awesome about one of my decisions back in 1988 when I switched major from Civil to Electrical Engineering. Proud to be one out of the millions with the IT background that has contributed to people’s happiness by 15% 🙂

Ten Reasons You Will Never Quit Facebook, but Five Reasons You Should

by Kamran Abdi
Over 400 million of us are on the social networking site, Facebook with a mixed feeling about the hell we are doing on it. I hope the list below helps you to make up your mind whether to spend anymore of your time on the site or quitting it for good.

Ten Reasons You’ll Never Quit Facebook

1. You’re not going to go back to waiting an hour to send an email to 30 people with 40 photos  attached.

2. How will you remember anybody’s birthday?

One and Half Million Fewer Jobs with Net-neutrality?

by Elias Shams
I finally had a chance to review the new report called “The Employment and Economic Impacts of Net Neutrality Regulation: An Empirical Analysis,” over the weekend. The report made me to think that perhaps the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last month in favor of Comcast against “net neutrality” was a good thing 😦

The study was  conducted by economist Coleman Bazelon at The Brattle Group and sponsored by Mobile Future, a lobbying group of businesses and non-profit organizations that advocates for an environment and encourages innovation in wireless technology and services. It warns that as many as 1.5 million jobs could be lost by the end of the decade if the FCC implements the Net-neutrality.

Investments Down In DC-Area, Improvement On The Way

by Elias Shams
According to the latest report from MoneyTree, Venture capitalists invested $163.4 million in DC-area companies during the fourth quarter, the highest total of any quarter last year, and more than double the amount invested during the first quarter. Despite the strong finish, however, the $539.6 million invested in local firms during the year was a 45% drop from 2008 levels.

I have a few friends in the area that killed the deal for not willing to give up a bigger percentage of their companies to the investors. The ideas were great….. The VCs were great….. the entrepreneurs just did not want to give up more at such early stage of their deal known as series A investment. I wonder how much of the 45% drop was as the result of such ongoing battle between the entrepreneurs and the investors?

The report on seed-stage financing was not great either, but still there were a few good signs – 2 percent increase in terms of $$$ 🙂 , but not in terms of number of the deals 😦 I have no doubt the continuous seed-stage financings has a lot to do with the fact the investors know some of America’s most successful companies were founded during recessions. Historically, when times are bad for the economy, it can be a great time to start a business. 16 of the 30 companies that make up the Dow industrial average were started during a recession or depression. These include Microsoft, Disney, McDonald’s, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson. In fact, from what I remember, Although, Google started during the glory days of late 90’s, but it really started kicking ass during the 2001 recession.