http://www.wmediaventures.com Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:11:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en ...AbeBooks, W Media Ventures, entrepreneurship and investing. Enjoy! (And thanks to Andrew!) http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/video-interview-with-andrew-warner-of-mixergy/ Since starting W Media Ventures two years ago, I had to realize that the Pacific Northwest lacks a good network of angel investors with active angels like Geoff Entress out of Seattle being the exception rather then the norm. This is certainly not because of a lack of successful tech entrepreneur in this ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/we-need-more-angel-investors-in-the-pacific-north-west/ Vancouver-based W Media Ventures is one of the premier early-stage Consumer Internet investors in the Pacific Northwest and is looking for an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR) for (all or parts of) 2010. If you are an individual with an outstanding entrepreneurial spirit and mind, who is looking to create the next best thing ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/wanted-entrepreneur-in-residence-for-2010/ It is the time of the year for predictions - here is what I think will happen in 2010 in consumer Internet: Facebook will lock down on its dominance of the social graph: Facebook Connect will become the standard for the social web with every major website implementing it. Other social networks ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/what-are-your-predictions-for-consumer-internet-in-2010-here-are-my-top-5/ Michael Arrington's post about search optimized content creation ("The end of hand crafted content") started an interesting discussion about the role of social media in differentiating good content from bad content (check out Fred Wilson's "Why social beats search" and the counterargument by Chris Dixon arguing that passed links will be critical inputs to ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/search-social-media-implicit-user-behavior-differentiating-good-from-bad-content/ While the past 10 years have seen a big focus on marketplaces for physical goods (eBay, AbeBooks, etsy, et al.),  there have been a few success stories of marketplaces for creative services in the past couple of years and it feels that this sector is poised to really take off. The most ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/new-opportunities-in-marketplaces-for-creatives-services/ VC funds go through challenging times world-wide but the situation in Canada is probably worse than in many other places. Most VC's in this country have been focused on the domestic market, both for raising funds as well as investing their money. Turns out that this created returns that were ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/the-challenge-for-canadian-vcs/ I often get asked what governments can do to help build a tech sector so I wanted to put together a few thoughts on this blog what I think works and what doesn't: Have a vision and speak with one voice: one of the largest problems I have seen in the ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/how-the-government-can-help-build-the-tech-sector/ The past week has been an interesting one for the online content space. First, Wired published a detailed profile on Demand Media and their "answer factory". Then, Techcrunch reported that AOL is following suit trying to turn AOL into a low cost content production machine. Other existing players in this ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/the-new-focus-on-content-production-at-scale-quantity-versus-quality/ Our portfolio company Suite101.com announced today that it has launched French and Spanish versions of their site after successfully expanding to Germany a year ago. Expanding an Internet company to international markets should be part of every business plan but is often easier said than done. At AbeBooks (which has localized ... http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/how-to-take-your-company-international/