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The Future of Browser Plugins (Hint: Let’s Call them Apps)
Albert Wenger – Mar 11, 2010
At Union Square Ventures we have backed a couple of companies that use browser plugins at the core of their services (Adaptive Blue, Zemanta). We have always been concerned about the potentially lower sign-up rates from requiring someone to install [...] Read more
Every Review Should Have A Comment Thread
Albert Wenger – Mar 10, 2010
Looks like I managed to put the entire post into the title, so maybe I should have just tweeted it. But here is a little bit of background. I was talking to a friend of mine last week who has [...] Read more
Oscar Fight(s) Recap: ABC vs Cablevision, Hurt Locker vs Avatar
Albert Wenger – Mar 8, 2010
Yesterday’s Oscars were notable for two different fights: ABC vs. Cablevision and Hurt Locker vs. Avatar. The first of these is a perfect illustration of what I call “fighting over the digital pie.” The reason things got so vicious between [...] Read more
The Internet Transformation (Talk Outline)
Albert Wenger – Mar 5, 2010
Today at noon I am giving a talk to the Japan Business Network in New York – an informal get together organized by my brother-in-law, Charles Danziger. The topic is the fundamental transformation of industries that the Internet will bring [...] Read more
More Thoughts on EBook Pricing
Albert Wenger – Mar 2, 2010
The New York Times had a piece yesterday on ebook pricing, which I have written about before. Interestingly, the piece simply states and doesn’t question that an ebook retailer such as Apple should be entitled to a 30% fee. What [...] Read more
Undercover Boss (In Your Startup)
Albert Wenger – Mar 1, 2010
We took a quick look yesterday at the Closing Ceremony for the Winter Olympics, which was painful (Shatner, really?) but as we flipped to another channel, we ran across Undercover Boss on CBS. The premise of the series is simple: [...] Read more
Cloud Computing = Democratization of Applications
Albert Wenger – Feb 26, 2010
The Web brought us the democratization of content. Cloud Computing will do the same for applications. That will be one of my key themes for the Cloud Computing panel this afternoon at the Wharton Business Technology conference (that’s assuming that [...] Read more
Burn Rate as the Canonical Mistake (for Web Startups)
Albert Wenger – Feb 25, 2010
One of the all time great opening lines is from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: I am beginning to think that the opposite is true for (web) startups. There seem to be surprisingly many roads to success. But the canonical road to [...] Read more
Defending (Internet) Freedom
Albert Wenger – Feb 24, 2010
I love Italy - for vacations, that is. But the decision by a judge in Milan to convict several Google employees for the posting of a bullying video on Youtube is a serious threat to the potential of the Internet [...] Read more