Fred Wilson: VC

Ignite, Set It On Fire

I almost missed out Social Media Week, but I got in a few days late, and I was not able to go to some choice events I would have liked to go to. I bumped into its webpage through social media browsing. You know how you go from people to people, link to link, update to update. And I am so glad I was able to do 14 events during Social Media Week. (Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever)

And now I am being introduced to Ignite. My friend Adam Carson (@adamkcarson) sent me an email a few days back. He forwarded me this blog post: Global Ignite Week: Starts Monday with 65 Cities, 6 Continents, 500 Speakers over 5 Days. If he figured I might like it, he figured right.

This guy said somewhere online he was 30,000 miles above ground and the update went viral, looks like. Virgin Galactic anyone? He meant 30,000 feet. He was so psyched about having wifi up there, he went from feet to miles. To the @ and # symbols, Twitter should add emoticons. So less people get carried away.

Adam is a good friend of Mark Peter Davis (@markpeterdavis) who you can meet at every NY Tech MeetUp unfailingly. Nate always calls on him at the very beginning. "Is anyone from DFJ Gotham here? Mark? You there?"

"We go back a long time," Mark once said to me about Adam. Mark has a wonderful, wonderful blog. He has practically written a book on venture capital at his blog.

Entrepreneur's Guide To Raising Venture Capital
Entrepreneur's Guide To Starting A Company
Entrepreneur's Library
Entrepreneur's Social Fabric
Entrepreneur's Toolkit

Adam is up in Hanover finishing up his MBA at Tuck with his wonderful wife Anna. And he sends me this email.

New York City needs its own South By South West. New York City needs its own Burning Man. What would be the urban version? Modifying Dennis Crowley's (@dens) Pac Manhattan might be a start. For now Ignite might be it. But let's shoot for a non-sexist name.

Galapagos Art Space Dumbo
16 Main Street
Brooklyn NY

Thursday, March 04, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 11:55 PM (ET)

@ignitenyc
@tikkers - Ignite NYC Director; Curator
@sandhyaX - Site Design; Content Management
@Laureado - Event Production; Sponsorships
@jonathanpberger - Design Advisor; PowerPoint Guru

• Speakers
• Events

My tweet to the organizers: See you @ Ignite. Guess 2 late 2 be Speaker. Or no? Would like to talk revolution.

My tweets to some others who are listed as attending: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5, Tweet 6, Tweet 7.






It might be too late for me to get my five minutes on stage, but I think it is going to be a perfect evening to meet a ton of interesting people. It is amazing to be part of the tech ecosystem in this city. It is early stage and it is gelling.

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The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us

Lyrics:
Mr. Silvas in da building
Checkins by the hundreds, thousands, trillionz

Ayo I know its my first stop
Look at that leaderboard and see me at the top

Bouncin to new places, adding em quick
I know all the TO-DOs and I got all the tips

Show up at the Bar and I check in Right Away
Sent it to my Twitter cuz Im here to stay

Looks like you got ousted welcome to the game
This is Foursquare bitch! Gowalla aint the same!!

Now that Im the mayor, now that Im here
Gimme my free breadsticks AND my cold beer!!

La la la la
How it feel to wake up and be the mayor of the city!
La la la la
Tryina get that Crunked badge, drinkin like P Diddy

[Chorus]

Got a rock like this
Cant use an iPhone, AT&Ts a piece of shhh

No one on the corner had an app on this
So I used my mobile web, wasnt very quick

You can learn where to eat just by checking my feed
Checkin checkin my feed checkin checkin my feed

Follow my lead its the road to success
Never need a reservation, they always say YES

But I cant teach you my swag
You can pay for a coffee but you cant buy a badge

School of social media Imma grad
I hope this hits techcrunch or else Ill be sad

Its Newby
Checkin w/ the groupies eating lotsa sushi

Newwwbyy
Bet you didnt know we could flow like thiiiiis

[Chorus]

Lets talk about the knockoffs, they just imitating
They cant even compare and no were not even hating

Copyin foursquare cuz you lack innovation
How could you turn down Googles valuation?

So let me say it now, let me be clear
Foursquare is the app that all you should fear

Hockey stick growth, all star investors
Lots of passionate users, all beta testers

I add lots of value, Im a superuser
You cant spell your top venues, super abuser

Dont checkin to your house, thats just really lame
Ill snatch up all your badges, call me David Blaine

Your checkins are fake, theres no way those are true
20 stops in one night? IM GONNA CATCH YOU!!

And whats up with all these randos trying to friend me?
Im checked in off the grid like TIGER WOODS B!!!!!













TechCrunch: Badges Like Us: FourSquare Gets Its Rap Song
Location! Location! Location!

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Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once

Image via CrunchBase

Four Ways of Looking at Twitter - Research - Harvard Business Review

My favorite is the final one, the StreamGraph. Visualization might be the only way, or the best way, to make sense of the thousands and millions of tweets being created by the minute. The idea can not be to read every single tweet, but to read all of them at once. Great blog post.          

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