Bernaisesource

Entrepreneurialism is alive and well in Atlanta. Along with Startup Lounge, Startup Riot, Start Atlanta, add Atlanta Startup Weekend (ASW), which I attended the past weekend. Like Startup Weekends held in other cities, ASW, now in its second year, was an intense 54 hour event that brought together tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, etc) to create companies from concept to launch.

I was only able to stop by on Sunday night but I was interested in checking out Atlanta’s commitment to building a high-tech community. More than 70 people were on hand for the final presentations — 50 more than last year. All in all, 130 people registered, 102 showed up the first day, 41 initial ideas were proposed, 7 companies were formed – all over one weekend.

Asked how Atlanta’s Startup Weekend differs from those in other cities, George Junginger, a Start Up Weekend facilitator, was “amazed by the amount of tech talent in attendance.” In other cities, he said there tended to be many more marketing professionals.

As a social media advocate, I am pleased to discover that all the companies that launched were essentially social networking applications. Perhaps it’s the nature of the event, but they all took advantage of Web 2.0 technology.

Some of the companies that launched include:

Twitpay.me, which let’s you send payments via Twitter.

Closebuy.me, a location-based inventory search engine. Want a specific camera? CloseBuy.me will tell you who has it in stock and how close they are to you.

GivingTi.me, which enables entrepreneurs to help each other one hour at a time.

Jumbis.com, which generates single product sales websites that turn buyers into evangelists. Automatically.

Reepli.com, which is a targeted social marketing effort focused on twitter and blog integration to allow companies to engage conversations.

The level of participation reflects “incredible progress from last year,” according to Lance Weatherby, a technology entrepreneur and currently a Venture Catalyst at Georgia Tech. He helped facilitate this year’s Atlanta Startup Weekend.

“The members of the media that covered the event and the number of attendees that stayed through the final hours of this Weekend demonstrate that the Atlanta high tech community is getting stronger…And it is not because of the current economy…Most attendees have day jobs,” said Weatherby.

That’s also the belief held by Stephen Fleming, chief commercialization officer at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. “Forget complaints about the lack of money or support. The high-tech community is a lot healthier than people give us credit for.”

Over the months to come, it will be interesting to see which companies get to the next level in their development. Skribit, which was the only company that launched last year, was on hand. It continues to evolve and attract outside interest.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Atlanta Startup Weeke; Twitpay.me; Atlanta; Closebuy.me; GivingTi.me; Jumbis.com; Reepli.com; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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This is a busy week, but I wanted to call your attention to a webcast I am hosting this week,Thursday Oct 2nd at 10:00 AM EDT. It’s a roundtable I put together that includes PR and marketing representatives from some of the world’s leading brands with corporate headquarters in greater Atlanta.  These representatives will discuss their companies’ use of social media. 

To listen and/or participate, please log on here.

The live, on-the-record webcast will address the growing importance of social media and how marketing and corporate communications are leading the way in advocating its adoption. The panel will showcase greater Atlanta based companies but the issues they face are global in scale.

PR Newswire is sponsoring the event, which will be hosted at Coca-Cola’s headquarters.

The panelists include:

Adam Brown, Director, Digital Communications, Coca Cola Company (blog)
Debbie Curtis-Magley, Manager of Corporate Public Relations, UPS
Bert Dumars, Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid (blog)
Jennifer Martin, Director Public Relations, CNN (blog)
Michael Pranikoff, Director of Emerging Media, PR Newswire

Listeners will be invited to submit written questions for the panelists to address.

As the former head of corporate communications at Atlanta-based EarthLink, I have long been interested in understanding how companies are using social media as a business model and a principal marketing channel – especially for companies based in Atlanta.

PR and marketing professionals are recognizing the importance of social media, but questions persist on securing management buy-in, identifying best practices, and determining a return on investment. This roundtable is an opportunity for some of Atlanta’s biggest companies with some the best known brands in the world to share how and why they are using social media. This is not to minimize the many smaller companies that are using social media, but larger established companies face a unique set of issues.

I hope you can listen in.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Social Media; Atlanta Social Media Roundtable; Atlanta; Adam Brown; Jennifer Martin; Bert Dumars; Debbie Curtis-Magley; Michael Pranikoff; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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Startup requisite: empty pizza boxes

Key take-aways from this post:

• Startup communities don’t always happen organically; they need direction and committed drivers.

• When possible, capitalize on existing infrastructure.

• Start Atlanta has the potential to serve as a model for other cities trying to reach critical mass for their startup communities.

This past weekend I attended the kick-off of Start Atlanta held in the Appcelerator offices in Buckhead.

The irony of the meeting location was not lost on many in the group of more than 20 entrepreneurs who came together interested in forging a stronger high tech community here in Atlanta. Appcelerator’s Jeff Haynie recently moved to Mountain View, California in the heart of Silicon Valley as part of a $4 million deal led by Storm Ventures.

Haynie has long been a leader in Atlanta’s high tech community and his departing blog post provided some of the inspiration for Start Atlanta.

Start Atlanta is another indication of a growing movement to deepen the area’s high tech’s roots, build a climate for investment and innovation, and attract and retain a younger generation of developers, designers and entrepreneurs.

It’s vencorps meets Y Combinator meets Kiva.

It’s recognition that there is no simple mechanism to fund companies. As one of the organizers described it, Start Atlanta is a breeding ground for community. It’s about sharing resources, cross-pollinating angel investors with entrepreneurs who in some cases have nothing more than an idea. It’s about facilitating connections, raising a collective consciousness and bootstrapping a community.

Gang of Five plus 2

I first learned about Start Atlanta from Patrick Clements whom I met at a recent Capital Lounge hosted by Michael Blake and Scott Burkett. Patrick who began Big Web Apps, (blog ) is part of the Gang of Five (actually seven) that meets regularly over coffee. Its members also include:

Loren Norman who has started several companies including Snowcap Labs (blog ), Alan Pinstein, founder of Showcase Real Estate Web Sites, Wei Yang Co-Founder, Business Development at EasyAutoSales.com (blog), Matthew Sweezey, Duncan Freeman whose company Band Metrics (blog ) is in private beta , and Ray Abram (blog)

Part support group, part strategy session, the Gang of Five decided it wanted to give some permanence to the many events popping up around Atlanta.

And so for two days and three nights, a group of mostly entrepreneurs and some investors met and brainstormed. This week they hope to unveil a community site.

Among those who attended the first night was Jason Ardell, a 25-year old entrepreneur. He is looking to help build a community and get Atlanta more recognition. His company feedscrub.com (blog) is in alpha. Think of his company as a spam filter for RSS feeds, an algorithm that helps find relevant content.

Rather than starting from scratch, Start Atlanta elected to build a site based on code from recently launched Hackers and Backers.

Hackers & Backers (Beta) is a meeting place for entrepreneurs, technical specialists, and investors. It lets you post a project and invite others to join. It helps search for people with relevant skills in your geographic area and check out their connections and credentials.

As co-founder , Ho-Sheng Hsiao who was on hand this past weekend told me, “Hackers and Backers is a combination of a social networking site and classified ads.”

He said he had a hard time looking for other entrepreneurs and thought a social networking site could spark community. “Start Atlanta is doing the same thing I wanted to do with Hackers and Backers. I wanted to see if there was a way to work together.”

And so Start Atlanta is building off Hsiao’s platform. They are adding several features to support development of the community, including a mini-project called Badgely.

Badgely prototype

As Alan Pinstein emailed after day 2, “Badgely is a system we have devised to track individual participation in the community and attendance at community events.”

To understand Badgely badges, think merit badges for entrepreneurs. These badges are meant to increase visibility and reward participants who attend and actively engage in events around the city devoted to startups and the high-tech community.

Through the first weekend, Alan wrote me that they “decided to focus on first getting the core community-fostering infrastructure in place while we make sure that we get buy-in from anticipated funders.” Plus, he added, “it’s going to take us at least several weeks to get the legal issues sorted out.”

There will also be an offline component to Start Atlanta where investors and entrepreneurs will be able to interact. It will also leverage the many existing events in Atlanta to help educate entrepreneurs and investors.

And so now the really hard part begins – sustaining a movement. At least for now, Start Atlanta joins Startup Lounge, Startup Riot, and Startup Weekend in establishing a viable community for entrepreneurialism.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Start Atlanta; Angel Investment; Atlanta; Badgely; Hackers and Backers; Startups; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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MFG.com’s A.J. Sweat and Mitch Free

In my search for Atlanta based Web 2.0 companies I came across MFG.com; it is the match.com for connecting suppliers with buyers in manufacturing, and it’s proving to be one of Atlanta’s notable high tech success stories.

It’s a social network, but don’t expect members to “poke” one another. Their needs are not California cool or Atlanta hot. Instead the company is focused on the 300 processes that fabricate, mold, cast, extrude, forge, and stamp.

MFG.com is an online marketplace servicing the global manufacturing community. Its platform simplifies the complex process of sourcing and selling manufacturing services. The technology connects buyers with suppliers of manufacturing services while directing the collaboration, quoting, due diligence and analysis processes.

MFG.com consolidates the once-fragmented world of custom manufacturing into a more efficient marketplace, enabling products to be sourced and built more easily, quickly, inexpensively, and at higher quality levels.

An Early Inspiration

MFG.com’s founder and CEO Mitch Free began his career as a machinist on a factory floor. An early inspiration for MFG.com came from Lendingtree.com’s tagline ( “When banks compete, you win.”) Free recognized that this same philosophy could be applied to manufacturing.

With operations reaching internationally, Free is succeeding where past B2B marketplace sites and software developers (VerticalNet, PurchasePro, and FreeMarkets) failed. Many other so-called B2B companies rose and fell spectacularly during the dot com bubble meltdown.

This I know first hand. I bought VerticalNet on March 10, 2000 at its peak. The next trading day, the Nasdaq bubble began bursting many a retirement plan.

Today approximately 180,000 companies around the world have registered.

What is the secret of their success? Delivering value is one reason; Web 2.0 is another. Where Web 1.0 was static and about controlling the environment, Web 2.0 is dynamic and about engaging customers internationally to build a better online experience.

Mitch recognized the power of community to drive transactions. Search engines can’t do it. Nor can directories, which need user lists to work. With Web 2.0, content generates the circulation, and community creates efficiencies.

While the adoption curve may take longer with communities, the connections are stickier. With the MFG.com community, Free sees an opportunity for people to interact, collaborate, negotiate and leverage collective intelligence.

The process takes time. Manufacturing in general has been slower to embrace the Internet. And suppliers in particular are not accustomed to transparency. The shift in control puts prospects and customers in charge.

To help extend the power of the community, MFGX.com was created under AJ Sweatt’s direction. The goal is to facilitate discussion and let users voice their opinions. Unlike other companies, MFG.com is not concerned about negative comments. The community is self-policing, and Free would much rather be aware of what is being said than discourage negative feedback.

With MFGX.com, users create their own profile to network with peers, build their reputation, promote their company, find employment (or employees), and buy and sell things.

Why MFG.com

MFG.com is interesting on many fronts for me. One is its commitment to Atlanta.

Despite his company’s success, Mitch had considered heading to the west coast, particularly given Atlanta’s attitude toward web 2.0 and its adoption rate. He decided to stay recognizing that he would be trading one set of problems for another — finding developers and scarcity of resources for the West Coast’s hyper competitive environment.

MFG.com is embracing Web 2.0, a technology that runs counter to its industry’s prevailing culture, and its understanding of negative comments is unusual for many companies in general and Atlanta corporate culture in particular.

I am particularly interested in what MFG.com is looking to do in its next stage of development. In fact, it was through my conversation with Mitch Free and reading MoneyBall that I have begun to understand how data can be used to sell social media. Social networks generate immense amounts of data, which in turn can spur new services and transform companies. In other words, social media is not a cost center.

That’s what Free is doing. Buyers and suppliers are always looking for new information. Their transactions generate data. Free is mining that data and helping MFG.com create a new generation of services.

One service is predictive cost modeling. Based on data about parts ordered, MFG.com can help suppliers and buyers predict the cost of products with similar features and how much to charge.

While I know far less about drill bits than digital ones, I appreciate how MFG.com has embraced Web 2.0 and applied it to new areas. Its success is a valuable lesson for any company who questions the power of community to drive innovation.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: MFG.com; MFGX.com; Atlanta; Mitch Free; Web 2.0; Manufacturing; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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Atlanta high tech industry pioneer Sig Mosley

His offices speak to his position as one of the deans of Atlanta’s high-tech community. The wood paneling in his lobby is a big contrast to the concrete digs of a typical start-up investment opportunity. And in the search for Atlanta’s most influential figures in technology, Sig Mosley of Imlay Investments would be on most everyone’s list.

Over that time, he has watched the emergence of an angel investment community. He has seen the glory days of the dot com bubble in 1998 and 1999 where he would see 40 business plans a week to its subsequent bust which sucked the air out Atlanta’s high tech industry.

As Sig told me, “No one anticipated how quickly and how hard the dot com collapse would affect the local angel community.”

For all its success, Atlanta is not without its challenges. He believes that Google might not have been funded if it had started here. Web 2.0 holds promise for Sig, but he doesn’t see as many opportunities for social media.

Sig Mosley has remained in Atlanta. But as a community, we continue to see departures — most recently Jeff Haynie’s — of our most talented, even for the best reasons.

Becoming a Top 5 Five Technology Community

His vision is for Atlanta to become one of the top 5 high tech communities in the country. To do this, he believes Atlanta needs to see more venture money and more angels investing in technology. And successful entrepreneurs need to get back into the fray after they achieve success. He supports the passage of proposed legislation that would allow the state of Georgia to allocate a portion of the State’s pension fund dollars for alternative investments. This legislation would go a long way to helping spawn high tech investment and demonstrate the state’s commitment to technology.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: John Imlay; Sig Mosley; Atlanta; Imlay Investments; Atlanta Technology; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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As reported by The Atlanta Business Chronicle, (subscription required) Atlanta based Appcelerator and its CEO Jeff Haynie (blog) are heading to Silicon Valley as part of a $4 million deal led by Storm Ventures. Rumors had been swirling for a few weeks and shame on me for not chiming in earlier.

I have been following companies like Appcelerator in my quest to promote social media awareness and adoption. Appcelerator allows developers to incorporate interactive features into their web sites without the need for JavaScript or plug-ins.

Haynie himself has been a leader in Atlanta’s tech community. Previously, he was co-founder and CTO of Vocalocity and has been regularly involved in such technology events as SoCon08, Barcamp, and Atlanta Startup Weekend.

Entrepreneur Scott Burkett says we are at a crossroads;

The Atlanta community has a choice to make. We can continue to play second fiddle to communities with half of the innovation present here. Or we can treat Atlanta as a greenfield opportunity and evolve. There are plenty of problems to tackle, and lots of work to be done - but it can, and will happen. But certain views, approaches, cultural hangups, and models will either need to evolve, or be pushed out of the way (this is already beginning to happen).

Now I know he wasn’t referring to me when he said “a greenfield opportunity.”

The online discussions may be messy. We may later regret the emotions that pour out, but we have at our disposal a forum to address real needs and present solutions. Through the collective wisdom of the community we can offer advice and help enterpreneurs create more fundable business models. Through social media, we can foster a creative environment where ideas matter. Yes we may vent, yes we may rant, but along the way we are taking advantage of these new channels that will hopefully spur investment in Atlanta.

Finally, I can take heart in knowing we can create successful high-tech companies. The challenge is keeping the homegrown talent here.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Jeff Haynie; Scott Burkett; Atlanta; Appcelerator; Sig Mosley; John Yates; Social Media; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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I wanted to give you an update on the search for Atlanta’s Top Tech 50. I have gotten a lot of feedback but there are more names out there. To organize the nominees, I have divided the group into the categories below. There may be some overlap, but I think it is a good way to organize the names. I tried to put in links where I could find them. If you have more current or more accurate information, please let me know.

As for what most influential means, I like what Brandy Nagel said in her comment on my previous post:

“Influential” is the combination of power and direction. “Influence” is the power to affect people or events…but “being influential” means using that power to move people and events in a particular direction. The people on your list have a passion for technology, they have a vision for the future, and the motivation to do something.

Here is where the list stands now. At some point, I also have to figure out a selection process. In the the spirit of social media, I am looking to the community to help make final decisions. In the mean time, please keep sending me your suggestions.

Academic
Benn Konsynski - George S Craft Professor of Business Administration at Emory University

Greg Laudeman - Georgia Tech

Kathleen Kurre - Georgia Tech’s TI:GER Program

Leonard Witt - Kennesaw State University

Margi Barberi - Georgia Tech’s TI:GER Program

Marie Thursby - Hal and John Smith Chair in Entrepreneurship, Professor Executive Director, TI:GER®

Merrick Furst - Associate Dean of the College of Computing at GT

Rich DeMillo - Georgia Tech

Stephen Fleming - Georgia Tech/VentureLab, Seraph Group

Associations/Councils/Chambers
David Harnett - Vice President Technology Industry Expansion at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce

Lance Weatherby - Venture Catalyst with the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech

Mike Cassidy - CEO Georgia Research Alliance

Tino Mantella - President, Technology Association of Georgia

Allen Graber - ATDC

Financial/Investors
Alan Taetle - Noro Moseley Partners

Allen Mosely - Noro Moseley Partners

Ben Dyer - Cordova Ventures

Charlie Paparelli - Paparelli Ventures

Clark Gilder - Atlanta Technology Angels

Freg Sturgis - Managing Director H.I.G. Ventures

Knox Massey - Atlanta Technology Angels

Mark Johnson - ERM Ventures

Meade Sutterfield - Angel Investor, Entrepeneur mentor

Melanie Leeth - Imlay Investments

Sig Mosley - President Imlay Investments

Stuart Harvey - CEO, Elavon Global Aquiring solutions

Wayt King - Founder, N2 Broadband

Government
Carol Henderson - Director of Innovation & Technology for the GDEcD

Legal
Jeff Leavitt - DLA Piper

John Yates - Partner, Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP

Media/Digital Content
Brian Ussery - Writer for Blogoscoped.com and SearchEngineWatch.com

Drew Ermenc - Catalyst Magazine

Mid/Large Cap
Becky Blalock - CIO Southern Company

Brian Shield - CIO Weather Channel

Guido Sacchi - CIO CompuCredit

Joan Herbig - CEO, ControlScan

Mike Reidenbach - CIO Global Payments

Pete Kight - CEO Checkfree

Pete Sinisgalli - CEO, Manhattan Associates

Robb Webb - CIO Equifax

Robert Hendricks - National Vice President and General Manager of IT, McKesson Provider Technologies

Non-Profit
Penny Lewandowski - Director, Entrepreneurship Development, Edward Lowe Foundation

PR/Advertising/Marketing
Chris Knoch - Head of Best Practices at Omniture Inc., Omniture’s Webinar Instructor, AiMA Board Chairman

David Cummings - Founder, Hannon Hill and Pardot

Sherry Heyl - SoCon, et al

Startups/Entrepreneurs/Small Business
Bill Nussey - CEO, Silverpop

Braxton Jarratt - CEO, Clearleap

Christopher Klaus - President and CEO of Kaneva and founder of Internet Security Systems

Dave Gould - Former CEO Witness Systems

Derek Smith - CEO Choicepoint

Dolan Falconer - Founder and CEO at ScanTech

Gregg Frieshtat - former CEO, INTENT MediaWorksg

Jeff Haynie - Appcelerator

Jim Geiger - Cbeyond

Jim McDonald - former CEO, Scientific Atlanta

Jim Stratigos - CEO, Jacket Micro Devices

John Huntz - Arcapita

Leland Strange - CEO Intelligent Systems

Mike Schinkel - Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs

Mitch Free - MFG.com

Neeraj Basandra - President Primus Software

Patrick Gaul - VP US Operation, Tescom

Paul Judge - CTO, PureWire

Paul Stamatiou - Georgia Tech student, widely read blogger, Founder of Skribit

Rick Latona - local domainer with multi-million dollar portfolio

Roger Barnette - CEO SearchIgnite.com, previous CEO of eTour.com

Said Mohammadioun - former CTO, Intellisync

Sanjay Parekh - Founder and Organizer for Startup Riot

Scott Burkett - Serial Entrepreneur and a Founder of the Startup Lounge

Tom Noonan - former CEO, ISS

Sanjeev Tirath - CEO Pyramid Consulting

Tycho Howle - CEO, NuBridges

Wain Kellum - CEO, Omnilink & Chairman of Techbridge

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Atlanta Top 50 Tech; Atlanta; Benn Konsynski; Greg Laudeman; Kathleen Kurre; Leonard Witt; Margi Barberi; Marie Thursby; Merrick Furst; Rich DeMillo; Stephen Fleming; David Harnett; Lance Weatherby; Mike Cassidy; Tino Mantella; Allen Graber; Alan Taetle; Allen Mosely; Ben Dyer; Charlie Paparelli; Clark Gilder; Freg Sturgis; Knox Massey; Mark Johnson; Meade Sutterfield; Melanie Leeth; Sig Mosley; Wayt King; Carol Henderson; Jeff Leavitt; John Yates; Brian Ussery; Drew Ermenc; Becky Blalock; Brian Shield; Guido Sacchi; Mike Reidenbach; Pete Kight; Pete Sinisgalli; Robb Webb; Robert Hendricks; Penny Lewandowski; Chris Knoch; David Cummings; Sherry Heyl; Braxton Jarratt; Christopher Klaus; Dave Gould; Bill Nussey; Derek Smith; Dolan Falconer; Gregg Frieshtat; Jeff Haynie; Jim Geiger; Jim McDonald; Jim Stratigos; John Huntz; Leland Strange; Mike Schinkel; Mitch Free; Neeraj Basandra; Patrick Gaul; Paul Judge; Rick Latona; Roger Barnette; Said Mohammadioun; Sanjay Parekh; Scott Burkett; Tom Noonan; Tycho Howle; Wain Kellum; Paul Stamatiou; Joan Herbig; Sanjeev Tirath; Stuart Harvey; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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This evening at 10:00 PM Eastern Time, traditional media meets new media, as the cast of the Turner Broadcasting System show My Boys will do a live chat in the Turner HQ in Kaneva, an online social entertainment world.

My Boys, which airs Thursdays at 9:30 PM ET, is a comedy about a Chicago sports writer and her group of guy friends. Actors Jordan Spiro (PJ), Reid Scott (Brendan), Jamie Kaler (Mike), Michael Bunin (Kenny), Kyle Howard (Bobby), and Kellee Stewart (Stephanie) are all scheduled to participate.

Kaneva combines elements of social networks and virtual worlds. Its members create digital versions of themselves — avatars — and then meet up in a modern day 3D world. Every Kaneva member gets a Kaneva City Loft — their own 3D space – which they can decorate and furnish in their unique style. Tonight avatars will be able to interact with cast members.

While Tricia Melton, senior vice president, marketing for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies “is always looking for new ways” to extend the TBS brand and market My Boys, she candidly admits that the Atlanta connection helps. Both Kaneva and TBS are based here in Atlanta.

For producers of network television, social media opens new worlds for an audience demographic that tends to be younger. Fans who meet on Kaneva are “super fans” seeking a more visceral experience.

Greg Foster, left Turner in March to join Atlanta-based venture firm Noro-Moseley as a general partner. He witnessed the forging of the Turner/Kaneva deal and feels “the The Turner-Kaneva relationship is a great example of how Atlanta’s media community should be working together.”

He also believes the Southeast is ready for entrepreneurs to develop digital media businesses along side traditional media companies like Turner, Cox and the Weather Channel that are all based in Atlanta.

Research found that viewers were writing about the show on their own and using Holly Hunter’s character as a launching pad to discuss issues raised on the show – often in very personal ways. The Embrace Your Grace site was a way to channel that enthusiasm and explore personal issues in a positive way.

The marriage of real and virtual worlds and traditional and new media does raise some interesting questions. What is the best way to leverage virtual worlds? Should the actors interact as themselves, as their characters or avatars? And how should fans interact with the avatars?

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: TBS; Turner; My Boys; Kaneva; Holly Hunter; Saving Grace; embraceyourgrace.com; Greg Foster; Noro-Moseley; Christopher Klaus; Tricia Melton; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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$3.5 billion. That’s what NBC and two private equity firms are paying Landmark Communications for Atlanta based The Weather Channel.

Today, Weather.com gets about 37 million unique visitors every month, placing it among the 15 most heavily trafficked sites online and the most popular brand online in 2007.

Along with interactive maps, TWCi is using blogs, widgets, photo sharing and webcams to deepen its ties with users.

The Weather Channel senior meteorologist Steve Ostro is one of several Weather Channel personalities who blog. He has a wide fan base and uses the weather.com blog to extend on-air commentary. A recent post received 139 comments.

Longacre told me that they have been using blogs for a “long, long time – long before their mass adoption by other companies.”

The Weather Channel greatly benefits from user-generated content through its photo sharing capabilities. According to Longacre, photo sharing has been a “huge success.” It was created in large part to channel the hundreds of thousands of unsolicited photos and videos they receive from users – particularly of their pets. Plans are underway to tag photos so users can search locally.

Weather.com is also using widgets to deliver the Weather Channel brand to their users’ own websites and drive traffic back to weather.com.

The Weather Channel is extending its reach and placing weather in a different context. Clearly sites for golf and other sporting events and hotels and resorts benefit from weather information.

All this technology reflects the competitive nature of weather. The Weather Channel is competing with niche portals like WeatherBug and local news stations that are beefing up their weather coverage.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: The Weather Channel; TWCi; Atlanta; weather.com; Mike Eckert; Weather; Monisha Longacre; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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Corner of Spring and Fifth, Atlanta

I had an interesting conversation with Paul Freet (blog) the last week at Atlanta’s equivalent of Palo Alto’s University Avenue. We met at the Starbucks (known as “Buck’s” – for all those who get the Woodside, CA reference). It’s at the corner of Fifth and Spring Street in the heart of Georgia Tech territory and right across the street from Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC - their blog).

True we don’t cut as many deals as Silicon Valley does, but, after talking with Paul, I was surprised to discover the number of early stage technology companies that we actually do have.

Over the course of a few Saturday afternoons, Paul recently built ATLlogos, a site that hopes to be a complete list of Atlanta’s early stage technology companies. Paul was as surprised as I was about the number of companies. “Until I put the site together, I had no idea what was happening.”

In some ways, it reminded me of Orli Yakuel’s go2web20.net, which is a comprehensive inventory of Web 2.0 companies and Andrew Cantino’s recently launched StartupWarrior, which shows the locations of computer technology companies across the globe. StartupWarrior uses a Crunchbase API.

That’s a free directory developed and maintained by TechCrunch of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit. Paul feels that ATLlogo’s advantage is that it does not rely on startups to post their profiles. He hopes doing the leg work himself will guarantee a more accurate accounting.

The site is clearly in its early stages and is far from exhaustive. But for me, ATLlogos is the virtual equivalent of Fifth and Spring — a place for vendors, job seekers, partners and entrepreneurs to connect.

Searchable by tags, the site includes a wide array of companies from security to sports. I was most interested in the social networking companies. In addition to Vitrue (see my posting), there were companies like ThePortNetwork that provides tools for building and managing branded online communities, CoActLive, an enterprise wiki, and ScreamingSports, the leading provider of technology solutions for fantasy sports players.

The site also includes companies as diverse as Skribit, Damballa, MFG.com, Suniva, SilverPOP and Kaneva whose founders inlcude some of Altanta’s tech elite (Christopher Klaus at Kaneva) to up-and-comers (Paul Stamatiou at Skribit.)

Technorati Tags: Paul Freet; Georgia Tech; Atlanta; Enterprise Innovation Institute VentureLab; ATLlogos; ATDC; Crunchbase; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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