As you have probably noticed, my posting frequency has gone down. Friday was my last day at Fleishman-Hillard and I’m on to bigger and better things now. I am going to have some pretty huge announcements in the coming days but for the time being you’ll have to wait to find out. I have been actively blogging over at AllFacebook and will continue to do so for the time being. That has been taking up most of my time recently.
Additionally, I had a great time at Social Media club the other night. I had the fortune to co-host with Peter Corbett. It was definitely different than typical Social Media Clubs. We talked about Facebook and soon after starting the discussion, people broke up into groups and started talking. I think there was more networking and socializing going on than typical but it was a great time none the less. I have some new things that I need to post about but I’ve been slammed with the new projects that I will be announcing soon, so stay tuned!

Tonight, I will be co-hosting Social Media Club with Peter Corbett. The topic of discussion tonight will be Facebook. If you are in DC and want to chat about Facebook and its impact on social media and the web in general, come stop by the event! Peter posted the event on Upcoming and you can register for the event through eventbrite. The event is being hosted by Blattner Brunner at 1250 I Street NW, Suite 1200. I will be posting a follow-up about the event sometime tomorrow. Come join the conversation!

The iPhone launches tomorrow and people are going to be rushing to get their hands on one. Apparently there is a huge demand for the phone which will run $499 plus a $59.99 a month plan through AT&T Wireless. The phone is definitely a costly item. I recently decided to go ahead and buy the Blackberry Curve rather than waiting for the iPhone because I was highly skeptical of the iPhone keyboard. To counter the buzz that had been circulating about a non-friendly keyboard, Apple released a video yesterday demonstrating the keyboard functionality. I watched the video and I have to say that I’m still a little skeptical. Conversely, I can’t argue that I can type 80 words per minute on my Blackberry Curve. Someone should release a typing speed test for the Blackberry. Anyone know of one? If you plan on getting your own iPhone chances are you are going to have to wait in long lines given that people are camping out, even the employees. Tomorrow will be a big day for iPhone fans worldwide. Will you be getting one?

As a response to the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board in D.C., Yahoo! has decided to turn off their online radio service, LAUNCHcast for the day. Unfortunately not all online radio stations are participating in today’s protest. I went and checked out one of the radio stations on my iTunes application and it was playing as normal. I seriously doubt that this is going to have any effect but it surely has created buzz in the blogosphere. The rate increases are pretty ridiculous. Royalty costs will increase 300 percent for large webcasters and nearly 1,200 percent for smaller operations. According to CNSNews, Live365 will experience an increase in royalties of a whopping $4.2 million. Many have called for the rate hikes to be appealed but there is no sign of any turnaround. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo’s actions make any difference.

According to Techcrunch Google is acquiring GrandCentral. If you don’t already know what GrandCentral is, it is a free service that allows you to use one number for all of your phone numbers. It will automatically forward calls to your any of your other phones that you specify and has value-added features. This includes a feature that automatically emails you an mp3 file of your conversation directly to your email as soon as you get done with a conversation. There are a bunch of other cool features as well. Bottom line, their service is really slick and it is not surprising to hear that they have been acquired.

According to the Techcrunch article, the company raised less than $6 million in venture capital, so any buyout is most likely greater than $30 million. While they hadn’t been generating revenue yet, their technology is far superior to competing offerings. If you want to have a single phone number for all of your communication, go check out GrandCentral. I guess Google is looking to go head on with Skype, and the purchase of GrandCentral will definitely help them get there. So who won’t Google go after?

According to the Wall Street Journal the domain Business.com could fetch up to $400 million now that it is on the auction block. Two of the predicted bidders are the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  Seriously … this is insane! Save yourself the $400 million and go grab Facebook for $3 billion and you’ll get a much greater return on investment. To be honest though, this auction is not just on the domain. The auction includes an existing business that is bringing in $15 million yearly EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). At a deal of $350 million, this company would be getting bought out for 24 times cash flow. Not bad for an internet startup!

You may be wondering where my post from today went. Well it was never written because I had a surprise this morning when I woke up. A few months back I received a speeding ticket. While I try not to drive to recklessly, I got caught by a speed trap. Anyways, when I woke up I realized that I had failed to pay my ticket and the trial was scheduled for this morning. I rushed out to Fairfax County Virginia General District Court and attended my trial. It was one of the longest processes ever. While sitting in the courtroom I had the opportunity to listen to and watch other individual’s trials. It was truly a learning experience.

The first thing I learned is to get a lawyer if there is a chance you might end up in jail as a result of a guilty verdict. Well maybe I didn’t learn it today but I saw the end result of not getting a lawyer. This one guy was driving recklessly at close to 100 miles an hour in a 55 mile per hour zone. The judge informed him that his charge was an offense that was punishable by jail time and then gave him the option to obtain a lawyer. This guy decided that he didn’t need a lawyer and that by simply apologizing, all would be well. What’s funny is how adamant the judge was in explaining that this guy should get a lawyer. He still decided not to. The result? He ended up in jail. The look on this guy’s face was priceless. I honestly feel bad for the guy but part of me doesn’t simply because he was a complete idiot.

My second lesson? I have a lot to be grateful for. There were countless people that walked up to the podium to be advised to get a lawyer. Prior to obtaining the lawyer that was assigned by the court they were asked how much they made. The majority of the people that were asked how much they make responded that they make a few hundred dollars a week. One guy worked in concrete while another guy operated a crane full-time. You think your life is hard? Try making $350 a week working out in 95-degree weather, only to have a quarter of your week’s earnings slashed because you had to appear in court. That sucks. After sitting in court for the day I realized how much I really have to be grateful for and it hit me hard. Try it out some time, it can give you a whole new perspective on life.

According to the Times of London, Myspace has been in talks with Yahoo! to discuss a swap of Myspace for a 25 percent stake in Yahoo! This is impeccable timing given Facebook’s recent platform release. If this is true, this would value Myspace at just over $12 billion. Is this swap likely to occur? Probably not. Yahoo! should save its money and go for a much cheaper Facebook.

Honestly, I am surprised that Myspace thinks they have such a high value. My guess is that this is more of a negotiating tactic than anything else. Even if Myspace exited at a $6 billion it would still be one hell of a return on their $570 million investment. This is a good sign that Myspace doesn’t have the development capacity to adapt and make a comparable platform to Facebook. Sucks for them! Anyone that decides to buy Myspace is not going to get much growth on their investment unless they can buy at a significant discount. This is a sign of a slow shift in the social network superpowers.

My good friend Frank Gruber just notified me of a new suite of products that is being launched by AOL. Frank has been working hard on preparing the products for launch and has now released the above video of the unlaunched products. Some of the products include a new feed reader, customizable Ajax start page, and Mgnet (pronounced “magnet”), an image-driven content discovery and recommendation engine. If you want to learn more about the products, check out the myAOL blog. The products should be launching later in the summer.

This one was a long-time coming. Many had already been speculating that Terry Semel would be replaced as the CEO of Yahoo! Well yesterday it happened. Who replaced him? Jerry Yang, one of the Yahoo! co-founders. I have to be honest, I’m not quite sure that this is the right direction. Yahoo! needs a total shakeup and this is not it. Typically start-ups have their executives replaced as soon as they get big. Conversely, a similar thing happened recently at Dell when Mr. Dell himself decided to take the helm again. Jerry Yang gives Semel much praise in his blog post.

Yahoo! has been in a rut recently with the unsuccessful launch of Panama. While all of the revenue generated by the new advertising system has yet to be realized, Yahoo has lost a large portion of their top executives to the competition. Also, Facebook has just taken a jab at Yahoo!, who has continued to be the dominant web portal. Had Mark Zuckerberg decided to spill the beans to Yahoo! about their new platform, I wonder if they would have received an offer greater than the $1 billion they were previously offered. Regardless, the web portal business is still an intensely competitive market and while Yahoo! has been shaken up in the past couple years, they are still at the forefront. It will be interesting to see where this leads!

There is a meme going round blogosphere discussing the Age Question. The discussion seems to be centered around the concept that it is more challenging to be an entrepreneur the older you get. Michael Parekh is wondering why none of these 20-somethings that are part of the Facebook generation are commenting on the subject. I’d love to take the opportunity to speak on their behalf!

First let me say that it is a privilege to speak on the behalf of 20-somethings everywhere, especially since I do not accurately depict the average 20-something. Most 20-somethings are not blogging about technology, or the state of affairs in this world. Instead they are blogging on MySpace about their dysfunctional (and occasionally functional) relationships. Ok, so aside from trying to sum up all 20-somethings in a couple sentences, allow me to comment on the age thing.

Investors will consistently throw money at young entrepreneurs because they are “fresh” and “new.” If you want to feel the pulse of the future, you turn toward those that are more youthful. In all honesty, if I was a venture capitalist and a 40-something came and pitched an idea targeting his or her own generation I would say “Wonderful!” I think bloggers have the unique ability to come close to grasping what is hip among the 20-somethings. Bloggers are inquisitive by nature and thus no matter what the age they will flock to the next cool thing to see what all the buzz is about. It’s in their nature.

So is there a barrier created by age? Nope. Not unless you think there is. The only barrier that exists is the absence of a center of communication where the age demographics are equal (if there is one that you know of please feel free to comment). This is especially the case in the blogosphere (primarily the tech blogosphere). Maybe I’m wrong but my guess is the demographic breakdown of those featured on techmeme is somewhat skewed toward late twenties and beyond. I would be interested to see a chart of the age demographic in Techmeme. Maybe we could talk to Gabe about this?

Two days ago a co-worker came to me and asked me for advice on how to use Facebook as a recruiting tool. While he had already begun utilizing it, he wanted some advice on ways to more efficiently search through people. In the course of discussion he asked me how to recruit more people like myself, given that I fall within the demographic that they are targeting for employment. I quickly explained to him that through the utilization of blogs and social networks we could attract more qualified individuals. After providing some additional feedback I left and said I would get back to him with any other ideas that I came up with.

Since then I have been thinking more about what would help recruit top notch candidates for employment. I came to the conclusion that transparency is critical. While I’ve read about the necessity of transparency in books like “Naked Conversations,” I had never realized the true impact, until today. How can companies attract new graduates that have spent their college careers on social networks, being granted practically unfiltered access to all of their friends social interactions through a story of pictures and other public statements? Well, there is no option but to become equally transparent.

I concluded that the best way to attract the “generation me” crowd that will soon contribute to the creative class in society, is to break down all barriers and grant them access to see the people that make up a company. I suggested that all of my co-workers on the digital team should be on Facebook with our profiles filled and have at least a few pictures. People connect with people, not with companies. If your company can illustrate that it is composed of fun, intelligent and creative individuals, I am willing to bet that there is a greater chance of attracting the people that you want to hire.

Prior to the internet, it was much more difficult for job seekers to view the people that made up a company. Instead, they went to those companies that had a solid reputation. Times have changed and companies need to open up. There is a revolution taking place that we are slowly beginning to see the impact of. The world has become more transparent, and as a result companies will need to become transparent as well if they intent to recruit the younger generation.