Andy Plesser

The technology boom of the late nineties, and its subsequent bust in 2000, led institutions to create exotic financial instruments to duplicate the steep gains enjoyed during the boom, says professor John H. Vogel Jr, a real estate expert at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Yesterday at at Web 2.0 conference, my colleague Mary Kathleen Flynn over at The Deal’s TechConfidential caught up with Fred Wilson, Tim O’Reilly, the EQAL guys and others over at the show.  Fred has sobering comments about the impact of the financial meltdown on the funding of start-ups.  Although money is tougher to get, burnrates […]

Michael Learmonth, who has been covering the the online video space for Silicon Alley Insider for the past several months, and has been beating the pants off many of his colleagues with numerous scoops, is leaving the Insider to join Advertising Age, Beet.TV has learned.

  Not only was this past Saturday Night Live’s broadcast a big hit on television, with its biggest season premiere audience since 2001, it has created the most popular online video clip ever published by NBC, a network spokesperson has told Beet.TV.  The opening Sarah Palin/Hilary Clinton skit performed by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler […]

  The New York Times broke its record for daily visits to its Website with close to 9 million yesterday (9/16), a spokesperson has told Beet.TV, citing internal numbers.  The upheaval on Wall Street, coupled with the presidential campaign and hurricanes have added to to the record numbers, a spokesperson told me late this afternoon.

Nearly 2 million visitors downloaded Chrome, the new web browser from Google, during its first week, Nielsen has just reported.

Like so many disasters which have driven news consumption, the earthquake that hit Wall Street on Monday has brought record traffic to the Wall Street Journal Online.  Monday set an all time record of two million visitors, a Journal spokeswoman told Beet.TV, citing internal numbers.  Traffic on Tuesday was nearly as high, we are told.  […]

Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks says that Flixwagon, the company which provides a Web platform for live and recorded mobile phone uploads, will announce a "white label" solution for media organizations and carriers to create their own branded channels. In Hollywood in June, I spoke with Flixwagon co-founder Sarig Reichert. I’ve republished this interview today. […]

comScore just released numbers on the dramatic increase in mobile search in the United States and Europe.  Mobile search has jumped 68 percent in twelve months, the web measurement firm has found.  Google is by far the leader.

I’m not sure if the expected announcement at CES of a new industry-wide system to make downloaded media work on any device will become a reality, as Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee writes today, but it is surely needed.  Here’s the take on this by Cliff Edwards at Business Week.

The immense interest in Republican vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has driven 38 million video views over the past week, including YouTube videos, broadcast videos and spoofs, reports the Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth.  Michael has created his report on numbers provided TubeMogul.

AlleyCorp, the Manhattan incubator run by Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, will jump from $8 million in revenue in 2007 to $50 million this year, Kevin tells The Deal’s TechConfidential’s Mary Kathleen Flynn in this video interview.  He says that AlleyCorp has raised $50 million in financing for its six companies.

Ovi, Nokia’s online platform for sharing information from mobile devices, just expanded considerably, reports John Biggs over at CrunchGear.  He writes: "The first and most important update is their file sharing system. After installing the Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC or laptop – it doesn’t work with Mac although there is some talk this […]

Our colleague Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee has done some investigating around reports that Microsoft’s Silverlight had been tossed overboard by NBC in favor of Flash.  It’s just not the case, Microsoft and NBC tell Chris.

Rafe Needleman, editor in chief of CNET’s Webware, takes us for visit to the TechCrunch 50 Conference demo pit.  He visits Rate Surfer, Jibidee and Givvy.

What is left for Google to solve with search?   It’s much more than 10 percent, says Google VP Marissa Mayer, commenting on a much blogged interview she did recently with the Los Angeles Times.

The San Francisco-based Pixsy, a white label video and image search solution provider, has tied up with giant British publisher Pearson to be the video and image search engine on Information Please. Pixsy is paid on a revenue share basis on new ad revenue generated through the Pixsy API. I have reposted an interview with […]

Tweegee is one of the TechCrunch 50 companies.  Kelsey interviewed CEO Shay Bloch on Monday. Here’s what Josh Lowensohn of CNET wrote about the new start-up: Tweegee is a virtual world that mixes e-mail, personal organization, and Flash gaming. It centers on an anime-like avatar that users build part by part. Likewise they can use […]

We are starting to blog dozens of video interviews from the TechCrunch50 conference.  We have a mix of the 50 companies and cool ones we found in the demo pit.  Here is Kelsey’s interview with Pano Anthos, CEO of Boston-based hangout.net — which is one of the TC 50.

Yesterday in San Francisco, Kelsey Blodget, associate producer at Beet.TV sat down for an extensive interview with Google Vice President Marissa Mayer.  In this segment, Marissa talks about the development and functionality of Chrome, the new Web browser from Google.