Twitter kills SMS service in some countries over costs. Will someone kill SMS already? (14)
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MG Siegler (905)
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2 weeks, 2 days
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I’ve got some bad news for you if you’re addicted to the micro-messaging service Twitter and don’t live in the United States, Canada or India: You’re about to get shafted. Twitter killed outbound SMS (text message) updates to all but those three countries today as rising costs made it impractical. Twitter had been footing the bill for the costs up until now, according to a post on its blog. The problem is that while sending ...
Venture Fund Economics: Gross and Net Returns (27)
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Fred (1899)
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A VC (1277)
3 weeks, 5 days
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The comments on my initial post on this topic went right at the VC's compensation - management fees and carry - and their impact on returns. So at Ken Berger's suggestion, I will change my planned post for today and address the issue head on. The returns venture firms get on their investments are called "gross returns". I didn't mention them in my post yesterday because I wanted to focus on the "net" returns to ...
The passionates vs. the non passionates (22)
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Robert Scoble (2859)
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Scobleizer -- Tech geek blogger (2745)
3 weeks, 6 days
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Every morning now I start out by reading FriendFeed. This morning there was a post by Steve Spalding called “the Web’s dirty little secret” which is about how small the audiences are here in the tech blogging world. Back in May Dare Obasanjo wrote a post about early adopters and how software developers should discount them. I’ve been doing a bunch of thinking about both of these things. How can entrepreneurs reach both passionate and ...
Response to Wall Street Journal article of July 22, "Icahn Ends Feud with Yahoo, Setting up an Uneasy Truce." (2)
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Carl Icahn (6)
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The Icahn Report (6)
4 weeks, 1 day
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Historians will marvel at why the press won???t write more about the egregious abuses and mismanagement at corporate boards in America and the Wall Street Journal article of July 22 is a good example of this abdication. The article states that I often exert an "outsized influence" as a board member, implying that this is somehow reckless and counter to the best interests of stockholders. In fact, just the opposite is true. Major shareholders, particularly ...
How to Jumpstart the Economy - Tax Free Small Businesses (52)
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Mark Cuban (572)
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Blog Maverick (570)
1 month
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I can't remember how many companies I have started in my life. It's quite a few. Many have worked, some haven't. The one thing I know with certainty is that at no time prior to starting a company did capital gains or income tax percentages ever impact whether or not I would start a business. As any entrepreneur will gladly tell you, you have to have income before you are taxed, so how much you ...
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Jon said:
If we really want to stimulate job creation in this country, take the same approach to small business with 25 or fewer employees that we take to Internet taxes. Outlaw them.No taxes of any kind on small businesses with 25 or fewer employees. No employer payroll tax. No state or local taxes. No taxes on earnings. Nada. The business owners will pay income taxes on their personal income they pay themselves, but not corporate earnings
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Haltse said:
Why stop at 25? If these regulations are harmful just remove them altogether. Article is odd since on one hand it's saying let's not volunteer taxpayer money yet that's the ultimate goal, get big enough to be a taxpayer.
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Paul said:
Some very good points on the state of entrepreneurial enterprise in the US.
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Simon said:
This is a very interesting idea...I don't see it happening but still I think it would do more than many other "initiatives" discussed.
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Sue said:
As usual, Mark has a provacative post about how to stimulate the US economy. This time, I agree with him - the paperwork burden is becoming a bit too difficult for the average business owner to navigate.
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Sue said:
As usual, Mark has a provacative post about how to stimulate the US economy. This time, I agree with him - the paperwork burden is becoming a bit too difficult for the average business owner to navigate.
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Daltonsbriefs said:
Dynamite conversation starter from an innovator
Read This Post (14)
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Fred (1899)
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A VC (1277)
1 month, 1 week
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My friend Roger Ehrenberg has posted one of the most honest candid post mortems on a failed startup that I have ever seen from the leadership of the company. His company, Monitor 110, tried to use technology to surface investable information from the Internet. That is an incredibly difficult problem to solve and I have witnessed more than a few firms stub their toe on it. But it's the back story that Roger tells that ...
Send SMS for Free via AIM on iPhone (Jeff Carlson/TidBITS) (11)
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Techmeme (4016)
1 month, 2 weeks
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Jeff Carlson / TidBITS: Send SMS for Free via AIM on iPhone — I expected that iPhone 3G service from AT&T would be more expensive compared to the original iPhone - $30 per month for data on top of voice service, a $10 increase), but the telco slipped in a poison profit pill by removing SMS text messaging from the plan.
Thinking About Blackberry Apps (11)
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Fred (1899)
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A VC (1277)
1 month, 2 weeks
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While everybody else is talking about apps for the iPhone, I've been playing around with my Blackberry's apps and some interesting things popped out at me. I use a theme on my Blackberry that allows me to see my five favorite apps on the right side of the screen which opens up the remainder of the screen for the photo I've got as my home screen. I love having photos of people and places on ...
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Aaron Brazell said:
Putting aside all the app prattle... it's interesting that Fred finds text to be the best communication for for non-face to face comm. Sure it's easiest but I think most people agree that picking up the phone usually yields better results.
New Facebook iPhone app tells Twitter and SMS what it’s doing: Gunning for them (3)
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Eric Eldon (296)
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VentureBeat (2581)
1 month, 2 weeks
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Today, Facebook has launched a new iPhone application, that directly targets messaging service Twitter as well as for-pay mobile text messaging services. The new application is a mobile status service that includes instant messaging functionality. It builds on Facebook friend relationships, but ignores a lot of the traditional social networking features of the site, such as profile info about what your favorite movie is. See screenshot. The new app integrates with Facebook’s existing “Chat” IM ...
Free is only good if someone else is paying for it. . (4)
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Mark Cuban (572)
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Blog Maverick (570)
1 month, 2 weeks
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Everyone wants to give everything away for free. Thats the way the internet should work, right ? Wrong. Let me change the conventional wisdom a little bit with this :Free is only good if someone else is paying for it. We dont want to waste our time with a product or service if its not worth anything. We want things of value, and we dont want to waste of lot of time trying to determine ...
Taking Stock Of Tech Startups In Paris (2)
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Fred (1899)
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1 month, 3 weeks
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Last week I attended Open Coffee in Paris where I met a bunch of interesting entrepreneurs. I also met the people who run a PR firm in Paris called Ballou PR. They asked me to do a full day “speed dating” session and a Pont Party during my time in Paris. After explaining the details of both, I said yes. I am not sure which is more fun, meeting 16 entrepreneurs in one day or ...
Are Prestigious Educations Killing Venture Capital? (1)
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Alexander Haislip (6)
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PE Hub Blog (24)
1 month, 3 weeks
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A source once told me that venture capitalists were the most risk-adverse averse people on the planet. It wasn’t until I understood the fee-plus-carry compensation structure that I believed it. A venture capitalist, before he or she is anything else, is someone who has taken money from an endowment, institution, university or retirement fund. Venture is a risky business, so those large pools of money naturally gravitate toward firms chocked full of people that seem ...
Mobile web usage grows, and it’s not led by the iPhone — yet. (2)
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MG Siegler (905)
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VentureBeat (2581)
1 month, 3 weeks
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It’s been known for a while that iPhone users in the U.S. love the mobile Internet, but that love is spreading to the rest of the population rather quickly, according to a new study by Nielsen Mobile. Of the countries surveyed, the United States was first in mobile Internet penetration with 15.6 percent of all mobile users accessing the web from their devices in May. The UK was second with 12.9 percent followed by Italy ...
