The Inquisitr » venturebeat

VentureBeat acquires Tradevibes

Duncan Riley — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:20:12 +0000

Technology blog VentureBeat has announced this morning at the DEMO conference that it has acquired crowd sourced company database startup Tradevibes for an undisclosed sum.

VentureBeat is renaming the service VentureBeatProfiles, and selling the new incarnation as a platform to “discover, research, and share information and opinions about companies.” Along with the core TradeVibes data and platform, VentureBeat is promising that the site will become even better — “making it much more useful to the hundreds of thousands of users that visit VentureBeat each month.” Additional features include support for press releases and conversation tracking.

The acquisition of Tradevibes by VentureBeat is being pitched as positioning VentureBeat as a serious challenger to TechCrunch. Why you’d want to challenge TechCrunch to begin with is interesting, but likewise the parallels are obvious: VentureBeat now organizes the DEMO conference (vs TechCrunch with TechCrunch 50), both sites write about serious startups…well, VentureBeat does more often, both sites compete for the attention of the Silicon Valley tech community, and now both sites sport a company database.

Tradevibes parent company Mill River Labs was funded by a $900,000 round in March 2008 from investors incuding Ron Conway, Aydin Senkut, Dave McClure, and the Kinsey Hills Group. The company has struggled at times due to its emphasis on crowd sourcing data vs creating it in-house, however its smart outreach in providing joint sites has positioned it as a worthy player in the space.

Disclosure: we have a relationship with Tradevibes for the provision of Qbase (see “Company Database) in the nav bar.

White is the new black in blog design

Duncan Riley — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:09:59 +0000

Blog design has always evolved. Last year many sites embraced the “magazine” layout, a big shift from the traditional read ten posts down the page layout that was typical of blogs for a long time. In 2009 the new trend is visual, with white minimalism being the new black.

The new white look in blog designs jettisons content borders in favor of no borders at all. Content, advertising and background share the same uninterrupted white, or with some limited background changes/ lines. Visually the designs offer a clean look that reduces visual clutter and presumably helps speed load times by reducing the number of CSS elements required for each page.

Here’s some recent examples of tech blogs embracing white.

GigaOm

In GigaOm’s current template, all lines are removed between background, content and advertising. The header in maintained as a block, a common element in this type of design.

ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb goes for a full width block header, and a thin line between content and advertising, but blends the rest.

Mashable

Mashable is an interesting mix. The current template embraces horizontal lines, but ignores vertical lines. The sidebar ad elements get gray individual boxes.

VentureBeat

VentureBeat has taken minimalism differently to the others, embracing it with their header as well as the rest of the site. The sidebar gets a background, but there are no other dividers.

Is white right for your site?

Just because white is in at the moment doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right for your site. There are advantages, including the potential of increased CTR if you’re not dividing your ads and content. The theory there goes that by not providing a visual barrier to ads, visitors are more likely to see them, therefore click on them.

The problem though with white is that if you do have a lot of sidebar items up that aren’t great to look at, white may actually highlight their nature more than a traditional side.

Also white can appear to be stark visually and may be a turn off. For example VentureBeat has combined white with a gray text color, so the white appears very, very white. It actually hurts my eyes, but that might be a thing with me only. Always keep in mind that you need to maximize readability on your site.

Conclusion

There are many more sites not mentioned embracing white at the moment, so there’s no doubt that it’s a trend that is well and truly in place. It’s this years take on Web 2.0, and it will probably spread a lot further until the next design trend is embraced.

Now is the time to start panicking: Sequoia

Duncan Riley — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:52:56 +0000

Sequoia Capital, arguably Silicon Valley’s most prestigious VC firm (they were the first investors in both Yahoo and Google) called a crisis meeting today of its portfolio companies, preaching that the entire industry is facing an abyss.

According to reports of the meeting, first reported by GigaOm, and confirmed by VentureBeat, attendees were greeted by a gravestone with “RIP Good Times” written on it. The meeting lasted several hours, and attendees were given a bleak message, including things could get a lot worse than people think, and it will be a more protracted downturn.

Companies were told that they must immediately cut costs, and to figure out ways to survive and emerge at the other end of this downturn, which could last years. Speakers discussed ways of cutting costs across various sections of each business.

Om Malik points out that Sequoia has held an identical meeting before: right before the first tech boom went bust.

There’s opportunities and risks in this marketplace, as we’ve covered previously, and this could be a case of Sequoia being overly cautious, after all, it’s better to make these calls now and prepare for the worst, rather than waiting for it to happen. However, who am I to argue with a team like Sequoia. The sky is falling. Start panicking.

4% of Hubdub users think The Inquisitr will be acquired next (50% think it’s some other blog)

Duncan Riley — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:12:36 +0000

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what is this?

Which Blog Will Be Next To Be Acquired?

% chance over time

TechCrunch

VentureBeat

Silicon Alley Insider

GigaOm

Mashable

ReadWriteWeb

ValleyWag

Center Networks

Boing Boing

The Inquisitr

Get this widget

Hubdub – The News Prediction Game

Online predictions market Hubdub has opened up a market on which blog will be acquired next after the news of PaidContent being acquired by The Guardian broke Friday.

Based on a report from Kara Swisher, one blog is out in front with a 50% rating. Nigel over at Hubdub though tells me that the smart money is on VentureBeat. Users rank the chances of The Inquisitr being acquired at the same level as ReadWriteWeb and Centernetworks, so we’re in good company.

Full details in the widget above, or if you’d like to make your prediction, visit Hubdub here.

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