New year, new thoughts and new resolutions. I cannot predict what will happen in 2008 but they say that thought and determination can create amazing results. In the last year, I learned a ton about social media and geeky technology news.
Richard McManus lists his top 10 stories on ReadWriteWeb and amazingly, some of the same stories mentioned (plus more) have been floating around in Silicon Valley came about in conversations during my vacation in Montreal this year. Not all of them are about Silicon Valley but many are telling of the way Bay Area technologies are changing how people live, talk and interact. Some of my favorites:
Yahoo!
Jerry Yang takes over Terry Semel. Everyone wants to know whether Yahoo will win the Google war. Others say Google is bad because it's the Microsoft of the Internet.
Google
The wiki market continues to await Google's entry with their former acquisition of JotSpot, which made all the talk around JotSpot near-news instead of full launch news. On top of that, Google launched OpenSocial to compete with Facebook following a Microsoft buy of Facebook shares back in October.
American Idol
Worst American Idol auditioner, William Hung, gains popularity with his naive charisma and can be easily found on YouTube.
All Dig Down
A friend's client, AllDigDown has the ambition and courage to try and take a bite of the social networking market. All I have to say about that is good luck, Shelley Taylor. Late entrants into this market will have a hell of a time trying to get consumers to sign up, even if Taylor claims that record companies are excited to get in on the deal. It's a lot to ask of people these days to put in their personal information and get high level participation on yet another Facebook but for music.
In Politics and Society
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated before the end of 2007.
CFO of Baidu Shawn Wang dies of unknown causes
A teenager dies of an attack by a Siberian Tiger at the San Francisco Zoo which makes one wonder what exactly the Zoo officials were thinking in the first place.
Also, let's not forget Facebook because I found out all kinds of odd news from friends through Mini-Feeds, and there's nothing like finding out your high school classmate is married and having his first son soon to make you feel one year older.
Welcome 2008!
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