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People seem to hit me up all the time about their startup. I find it quite interesting as half the time all they really want is an introduction to someone that I know.

That’s fine, just ask for that intro. I’ll usually give you my full attention to what it is you want to do, and I’ll think of who I can connect you with. Now if I don’t connect you with anyone, that means I don’t think your idea is worth a damn. But hey, I’m not someone that knows it all either, so just because I say it’s not worth it, doesn’t mean it totally sucks.

What I won’t do is lie to you and say “Yeah, you have a great idea!” – when it reality it isn’t a great idea and I can’t see any worthwhile thing coming out of it. Then again, there are things I’ve probably snubbed and would have gone on to make great ideas. Thinking really hard about it now, in the past ~8 years or so. I probably would have passed on:

- Twitter – stupid, it’s nothing more than SMS with some stupid naming conventions

- Skype – another dumb chat program with video chat, and the only saving grace may have been the encryption

- Facebook – who needs another MySpace/Friendster

As you can see, I would have not done a few things and probably would have been burned by that fact. All three companies listed above would have been in foresight been passed on by me. That goes to show you one thing.

Not everyone is perfect in their judgement of your startup. If one person says “No”, be sure to keep trying. That one person could be someone like me. A person that really only has an opinion and you know what they say about that!

Related articles

• Getting Started With Skype (blogs.skype.com)
• What Did Facebook Change Now? (thedailybeast.com)
• Jason Fischl joins Skype as Director of Developer Relations (blogs.skype.com)
• Killing the Internet (modnmindful.wordpress.com)
• 21 gadgets that’ll make you feel really old (cbsnews.com)

Which of the three services do you like (you can like all three) and for what purposes are you using them?

Do you buy into what this article stated – Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded | Singularity Hub

Vote here or just leave a comment with your thoughts if you like all 3 services equally or have no real preference at this time:

Technically Speaking, how many think that the “awesome” Facebook announcement was lame? (leave a comment also if you want to answer that one!)

Related articles

• Google should just buy Twitter already. At any price. (agrawals.org)
• Google Realtime Search (wir-sprechen-online.com)
• What’s the Deal with Google+? (directcontact.ca)
• Google’s Clinton Says Google + Great Success Already (seroundtable.com)
• Google Plus for Business (insideview.ie)

Another very popular post from back in April:

Maybe it’s me, but the last time I looked 50 was not equal to 40!

	PICTURE	RANK	NAME	WEBSITE NAME	AGE	NETWORTH
		1	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	23	$700 Million
		2	Andrew Gower	Runescape	28	$650 Million
		3	Chad Hurley	Youtube	30	$300 Million
		4	Blake Ross and David Hyatt	Mozilla	22	$120 Million
		5	Andrew Michael	Fast Hosts	29	$110 Million
		6	Angelo Sotira	Deviant ART	26	$75 Million
		7	John Vechey	PopCap Games	28	$60 Million
		8	Alexander Levin	Image Shack	23	$56 Million
		9	Jake Nickell	Threadless	28	$50 Million
		10	Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith	Tagged	28	$45 Million
		11	Sean Belnick	Biz Chair	20	$42 Million
		12	Matt Mullenweg	WordPress	23	$40 Million
		13	Kevin Rose	Digg	30	$31 Million
		14	Aodhan Cullen	Stat Counter	24	$25 Million
		15	Markus Frind	Plenty Of Fish	29	$23 Million
		16	Robert Small	MiniClips	24	$23 Million
		17	Ryan Block	Engadget	25	$20 Million
		18	Matt Mickiewicz	Sitepoint	24	$18 Million
		19	Tom Fulp	Newgrounds	29	$15 Million
		20	Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker	Voltage	24	$12 Million
		21	Catherine and David Cook	My Year Book	17&19	$10 Million
		22	Fredrik Neij	The Pirate Bay	28	$10 Million
		23	DAVID LEVICH	Iced Out Gear	25	$10 Million
		24	Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons	Yelp	30 & 29	$10 Million
		25	David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos	GotvMail	24	$8 Million
		26	Rand Fishkin	SEOmoz	29	$6.5 Million
		27	Jermaine Griggs	Hear and Play	23	$5 Million
		28	Jay Westerdal	Domain Tools	29	$5 Million
		29	Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	17	$4 Million
		30	Ben Way	Rain Makers	27	$4 Million
		31	Pete Cashmore	Mashable	30	$3.8 Million
		32	Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry	Meebo	30,29 and 27	$3.5 Million
		33	Cameron Johnson	Millionaires Secrets	22	$3.2 Million
		34	Rob Benwell	Blogging to the Bank	23	$3 Million
		35	Alex Tew	Million Dollar Homepage	22	$3 Million
		36	Mario Lavandeira	Perez Hilton	29	$3 Million
		37	Lauris Liberts	Frype	25	$2 Million
		38	Neil Patel	ACS	22	$1.8 Million
		39	Zhang Rui	Mosh	28	$1.1 Million
		40	Matt Wegrzyn	Bodis	19	$1 Million

Technically Speaking, 40 is still not equal to 50!

Technically Speaking, it’s not only summer time, but also a Saturday!

I’m deleting my Facebook page today at 1pm Pacific today.

You can watch live here, and perhaps join me!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/this-week-in-startups

So what about YOU? Waiting for May 31st to roll around? Are you deleting your Facebook account, or at least by June 1st when this poll ends?

Vote in this Twtpoll:

Technically Speaking, are YOU joining everyone else and commit social media suicide as Frank put it?

Maybe it’s me, but the last time I looked 50 was not equal to 40!

	PICTURE	RANK	NAME	WEBSITE NAME	AGE	NETWORTH
		1	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	23	$700 Million
		2	Andrew Gower	Runescape	28	$650 Million
		3	Chad Hurley	Youtube	30	$300 Million
		4	Blake Ross and David Hyatt	Mozilla	22	$120 Million
		5	Andrew Michael	Fast Hosts	29	$110 Million
		6	Angelo Sotira	Deviant ART	26	$75 Million
		7	John Vechey	PopCap Games	28	$60 Million
		8	Alexander Levin	Image Shack	23	$56 Million
		9	Jake Nickell	Threadless	28	$50 Million
		10	Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith	Tagged	28	$45 Million
		11	Sean Belnick	Biz Chair	20	$42 Million
		12	Matt Mullenweg	WordPress	23	$40 Million
		13	Kevin Rose	Digg	30	$31 Million
		14	Aodhan Cullen	Stat Counter	24	$25 Million
		15	Markus Frind	Plenty Of Fish	29	$23 Million
		16	Robert Small	MiniClips	24	$23 Million
		17	Ryan Block	Engadget	25	$20 Million
		18	Matt Mickiewicz	Sitepoint	24	$18 Million
		19	Tom Fulp	Newgrounds	29	$15 Million
		20	Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker	Voltage	24	$12 Million
		21	Catherine and David Cook	My Year Book	17&19	$10 Million
		22	Fredrik Neij	The Pirate Bay	28	$10 Million
		23	DAVID LEVICH	Iced Out Gear	25	$10 Million
		24	Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons	Yelp	30 & 29	$10 Million
		25	David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos	GotvMail	24	$8 Million
		26	Rand Fishkin	SEOmoz	29	$6.5 Million
		27	Jermaine Griggs	Hear and Play	23	$5 Million
		28	Jay Westerdal	Domain Tools	29	$5 Million
		29	Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	17	$4 Million
		30	Ben Way	Rain Makers	27	$4 Million
		31	Pete Cashmore	Mashable	30	$3.8 Million
		32	Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry	Meebo	30,29 and 27	$3.5 Million
		33	Cameron Johnson	Millionaires Secrets	22	$3.2 Million
		34	Rob Benwell	Blogging to the Bank	23	$3 Million
		35	Alex Tew	Million Dollar Homepage	22	$3 Million
		36	Mario Lavandeira	Perez Hilton	29	$3 Million
		37	Lauris Liberts	Frype	25	$2 Million
		38	Neil Patel	ACS	22	$1.8 Million
		39	Zhang Rui	Mosh	28	$1.1 Million
		40	Matt Wegrzyn	Bodis	19	$1 Million

Technically Speaking, 40 is still not equal to 50!

I assume by the end of the weekend, the 1138 (I was 1139) followers will be in the neighborhood of 10 times more. Have you followed @finkd yet? What am I talking about? Well if you somehow just woke up, @finkd is the real Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently this so called secret account is no longer a secret after VentureBeat broke the news this morning.

While VB maintains, like other people do that search is going to make them money …

Which is funny, because Twitter’s real-time, open search capability is one of the features that Facebook seems intent on redesigning its site around. Twitter search could be a key way for the microblogging service to make money, because it helps you find current information that you care about based on what others are saying. As with Google, some fraction of such services involve a user’s intent to buy something, which is where advertisers want to be.

… and it’s a damn good guess. I’m going to back the position of old school business meets new school and utilizes a tried and tested formula as I blabbered on about in this morning’s siliconANGLE post I wrote ….

Think about it. All the parts are there. The VC’s are looking for a cash cow with a high user adoption rate. They are looking for something that will provide a consistent flow of money like an open water spigot. The music business has a high adoption rate of listeners. At one time, they controlled the water spigot. Right now twitter controls the water spigot with the same high and growing usage rate. They are the only game in town, your basic monopoly of the API. Understand now?

…. and Eric was lucky to be number 45 …

Right now, a range of current and former Facebook executives and associated tech types are some of the 44 people already following him (I just made myself number 45). Perhaps Zuckerberg will go cold as more people follow him? Or perhaps he’ll enjoy public sharing.

… as I just made 1139 as stated above!

Technically Speaking, what do you think the number of followers will be by Monday morning? I’m sure it will easily be 10 times the number now, maybe more!

It’s late on a Friday afternoon, and while siliconANGLE is a new blogging venture that John Furrier invited me in on, it’s certainly not lacking for content! Currently we are growing, and as we grow we should have even more content for you to read.

Here is a look at what has been happening just over the past couple of days:

It’s Almost Too Late to Save Print Media – Rizzn digs in here with a great post that of course was spurred on by the closing of the newspaper today – The Rocky Mountain News.

MicroPlaza Organizes URL’s That Tweet Past You – Yes as one of our readers pointed out – it’s not a twitter based company, but more like a company that has been created once again based on the twitter API!

iPhoneMania Only in Certain Locations – iPhone seems to be a no go in Japan.

DEMO 09 Class of Demonstrators! – John was given a schedule for DEMO09 last week, and we posted it. Later we did find out that it was under embargo, so while that looks bad on us, we as siliconANGLE the blog was never officially given this item with someone saying to John “Yo, it’s under embargo until such and such time!”

Facebook Decides To Be A Commune – After writing this one, I was sort of thinking, “That’s pretty damn good!” – and when I was linked later, I was quite pleased others had a similar line of thinking. Although as I watched Mark Zuckerberg this morning on Today, I was hoping, “Man, I hope he didn’t see that and make some rude comment about communes and hippies!” And if he did, well – that would have been even cooler! :)

Yahoo Re-Org Round-Up – Rizzn masterfully sorted out the mess known as the Yahoo re-organization memo(s) or rather, we found out that the new CEO likes to memo out the employees! Another skillful surgery through the massive amounts of Yahoo coverage, Rizzn’fied.

Will Michael Sit Become Web 2.0’s Kevin Mitnick? – Rizzn once again cuts through the noise, and this time pulls something to to the surface that is being buried. Yes, Michael Sit – the media ignores it, but Rizzn rips through the slime of cover up to pull the facts to the surface for the readers.

Twitterfied Yet? – Do we need more twitter coverage? Google coverage? Well maybe not, but we covered it anyways.

DEMO Changing Hands – Kara Swisher Interview with Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley – John has total respect for DEMO and the changes and posted the Kara Swisher interview with Matt and Chris.

Forget InterWebs Think InterClouds – John talks about the InterClouds.

Panther Express and CDNetworks Merger – Making sure we also try to keep up with the infrastructure.

Social Media Lessons Learned – What To Do – John talks about social media and what he has learned. This seemed to be a popular subject this week, and John addressed it well.

Technically Speaking that was just the past two days over at siliconANGLE and hopefully you had a chance to check in and read a few of those posts, and if not, well there is the weekend to catch up on the angles we presented over the past couple of days, and there is more if you want to dig back a little bit.