“Taking money from someone else kills more start-ups than anything else does. Do everything you can to avoid taking money. If you must, your best prospects are potential customers. You have something they want, so if they invest in you, it can be a win-win situation.” — Mark Cuban

via 37Signals

Compete just revised UP Yahoo’s market share number significantly - by 5.3 percentage points.

To put this number in perspective — combined market share of AOL and ASK.com = 4.1%

On Monday we released our May Search Share numbers. As a result of some conversations we were having with Danny Sullivan in parallel we sent over our “rules” we use to mine the search data. Danny threw these up on his post reviewing our data and one savvy reader very quickly identified an issue with our rules. So, long story short, we have fixed our Yahoo! rules (and also reevaluated all the other engine rules in the process). Here’s the updated data based on adjusted rules.

According to the revised market share numbers, a MSFT/Yahoo Search combination would yield:

Yahoo+MSN/Live = 28.5% combined market share (revised)
Yahoo+MSN/Live = 23.9% (old)

However, as Jeremy points out in his post, trend wise not much has changed. Yahoo Search market share is still trending downwards.

I’m sure folks at Microsoft (and Wall Street) have been watching these numbers closely (along with those from comScore, Hitwise, etc). This revision certainly makes Yahoo worth more, but is it enough for Microsoft to change its mind? Only time will tell.

CORRECTED STATS:

OLD STATS:

According to Compete, Google now (since March ‘08) has more “reach” than any other web property in the United States. While Yahoo is ahead on every other metric that Compete reports on, Google is catching up slowly, but steadily.

note: stats do not include Google/Yahoo owned properties that may be hosted on their own domains ex. YouTube, Flickr, etc.

Read full post here | Get Shareaholic @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5457

Less than a year later, in September 2007 for the first time more people visited Compete.com than Alexa (a Amazon owned online audience measurement company). It’s been a closely fought (& monitored) battle for supremacy since then.

In April 2008, 18 months after launch, Compete.com broke through, and is now clearly ahead of Alexa. It used to be a close battle. No longer. Compete.com continues to make me proud :)

Watch out for more great stuff to come from the Compete team in the near future. I hear they have a pretty big release cookin’

A big thank you to our pals at Viximo for sharing their space with us :)

Update: David just posted some more pictures here.

Firefox is gearing up to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours by encouraging all 175 million+ Firefox users to upgrade in a single day.

Final shipping date is estimated for mid-June. Release Candidate 2 is currently expected to be available on Wednesday, June 4th.

Are you in? Sign up now to get notified when Firefox 3 goes out the door.

Great article by Jackie Noblett of the Boston Business Journal on the changing tide of business networking in Boston. POPSignal on page 2.

Friday, May 16, 2008
Social Network
Local techies take cue from West Coast to mix parties and business

Greater Boston’s techies are bucking the label of the introvert and turning out to meet each other at a growing number of area get-togethers. At events ranging from small coffee talks to big bashes at nightclubs, they also are helping to defy a stereotype — that despite its large student population, Boston is cold, stodgy and lacks the socializing and networking opportunities that grease deals in places like Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.

The change, if it comes off, will be the work of a handful of visionary techies that have made it their mission to build buzz and raise the spirits of hundreds of geeks, entrepreneurs and investors.

“In the last 18 months we have been blessed with a definite increase in the number of events taking place,” said Mark Doerschlag, founder of MarksGuide, a Web site that tracks local business networking events. “Boston’s doing the right thing by encouraging these types of events.”

…

Two days later, the first POPSignal party was scheduled to take place at the Tequila Rain nightclub in Boston, bringing hundreds of techies together for music, dancing and free booze.

Brian Balfour and Jay Meattle of POPSignal, a startup designing a Web platform for the local tech community, said the event came from a demand for even more social events for the younger crowd.

“I really wanted to do something more social, just bring the tech community in and have fun,” Balfour said. “You make your best connections in social environments.”

POPSignal’s 450 person RSVP list filled within 48 hours.

Read the full article here.

GS is on MSFT as well. Implications?

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu.

found via Chris Brogan // Matt Mason. Thanks guys!

Read full post here | Get Shareaholic @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5457

Here, set against the backdrops of Nairobi city and the beautiful landscape of Uhuru Park (Maasai country), a Kenyan choir sings the Indian national anthem.

The director has chosen the Indian anthem because Kenya is home to a sizeable Indian population (including Sikhs & Jains also) of approximately 2.5 million, most of them descendants of the East African Railways labourers who were brought over by the British during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the British colonialists ruled Kenya and the rest of the East African region.

What does this mean for Shareaholic? More exposure, resulting in a bigger user & feedback community. According to Basil Hashem, the directory currently receives about 5 million pageviews per day with approximately 3% of the traffic to the recommended list.

None of this would be possible without your support. A BIG BIG thank you to Mozilla, and our users for supporting, using, and believing in Shareaholic.

May 29, 2008 - 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST
Kasbeer Hall - Loyola University
Water Tower Campus
Chicago, Illinois

If you want to save a little bit on the ticket simply use the discount code: techcocktailers

When the community asks, we give. So we went to work, and we’re pleased to announce that Shareaholic now fully supports Songbird!

You can download Songbird @ http://www.songbirdnest.com
Shareaholic @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5457

> READ THE FULL POST HERE