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Making $$ on the Web
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Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million Feb 11, 2010
Google has acquired social search service Aardvark, says a source that has been briefed on the deal, for around $50 million.
Aardvark, founded by ex-Googlers, has raised around $6 million in venture capital to date. The service lets users ask questions and get immediate responses from their friends and friends of friends.
Earlier this month the company published a research report that included some key stats about their business:
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Psychology
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Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy
Accelerated thoughts may trigger the brain's novelty-loving reward system
By Siri Carpenter
February 2009 Scientific American Mind
Lousy day? Don’t try to think happy thoughts—just think fast. A new study shows that accelerated thinking can improve your mood. In six experiments, researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed.
Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author.
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Tech Business
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Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome
By JOHN TIERNEY / NYTimes
Published: February 8, 2010
Sociologists have developed elaborate theories of who spreads
gossip and news — who tells whom, who matters most in social networks —
but they’ve had less success measuring what kind of information travels
fastest. Do people prefer to spread good news or bad news? Would we
rather scandalize or enlighten? Which stories do social creatures want
to share, and why?
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Biz Models
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Blogging among teens and young adults
Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while
simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology
embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites
continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for
microblogging with status updates.
Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young
adults since 2006. Blog commenting has also dropped among teens.
- 14% of online teens now say they blog, down from
28% of teen internet users in 2006.
- This decline is also reflected in the lower incidence of teen
commenting on blogs within social networking websites; 52% of teen
social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the
76% who did so in 2006.
- By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within
the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent
years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that
roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or
blog.
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Startup / Entrepreneurship
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EventVue post-mortem
Friday, February 5, 2010
Unfortunately, we have decided to shut down EventVue. You can
read our founder’s letter
to customers and friends here.
We’re very thankful for all the support that EventVue has
received. Many people have helped us, cheered for us, and challenged
us.
We also deeply believe in the power of failure to teach and help
us learn. In fact, we understand with even more clarity now why there
is so much advice for entrepreneurs - no one who has failed wants their
mistakes repeated. In that spirit, we’re sharing publicly our EventVue
post-mortem.
EventVue - a look backwards
Over the past 3 years, we have
tried various products and markets in the event industry and have not
made a business with growth.
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Biz Models
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Your brain's tipping point is maxed out at 150 Facebook friendsMonday, January 25, 2010, 7:31am PST
A British anthropologist famous for research on the size of "social circles" that the brain can handle efficiently is now applying his studies to Facebook.
Robin Dunbar told The Sunday Times of London that the same limit of 150 meaningful acquaintances that applies in the real world holds true in social networks.
"The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” Dunbar told the paper.
He also suggests that females are better at ...
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Biz Models
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Half of Americans Will Go Online to Fullfill New Year’s Resolutions
The internet will play big role in many Americans’ efforts to
fulfill their New Year’s resolutions, according
to a recent study by Performics.
The research found that nearly half (48%) of respondents indicated they
would use the internet to perform research as it relates to
accomplishing their resolution.
Specifically, the December results from the “2009 Online Buyer
Economic Trend Study” revealed that 36% of US consumers indicate they
will go online to purchase items to further their resolutions, and 14%
say they will uise an online support group or community to help reach
their 2010 goals.
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