10 reasons why you don’t want to miss The Next Web ‘10

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on April 22nd, 2010
If you’re still in doubt if you should buy a ticket for The Next Web Conference then let me give you ten reasons to convince yourself: 1. We have great, inspiring, and approachable speakers. 2. We have a 360 schedule for you throughout the whole conference. 3. The Next Web is the place to do business with the [...]

Announcing the finalists of The Next Web Paypal X Startup Rally 2010

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on April 12th, 2010
The Next Web Conference is in two weeks and over a thousand attendees from all over the world that share a passion for the mobile and Internet scene will attend. For 3 days, and right before the famous Dutch national holiday Queensday, Amsterdam is the place to be for people and businesses that shape the [...]

Crazy! We’re giving away iPads

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on April 2nd, 2010
It is almost Easter and while everyone is enjoying a couple of days off, our preparations for the upcoming The Next Web Conference continue. We’re at the office, or in wifi-enabled coffee bars working away piles of unanswered emails during Easter. This is also the weekend that the iPad will be introduced. We’re very excited about [...]

World’s First: Dutch Social Network Hyves Integrates ‘No Fee’ Social Payments

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 24th, 2010
Hyves with its 9 million Dutch profiles and around 250 million pageviews per day is by far the biggest social network in the Netherlands. Almost 60% of all Dutch inhabitants have a Hyves account. Today Hyves announced a very powerful and interesting feature, a feature each and every social network (including Facebook, MySpace) should be envious [...]

Startups, Announcing The Jury of Experts

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 20th, 2010
An important part of The Next Web conference (get your tickets today!) is the TNW Paypal X Startup Rally. Not only for the startups that present their new services for the most tech savvy crowd of Europe, but also for the attendees. The Startup Rally gives a good feeling on what is happening in the [...]

Last call for Startups. Rock or Die

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 17th, 2010
If you’re a startup you have 2 options, Rock or Die. The question is, which one applies to your startup? Do you hide yourself in the garage or basement and hope somebody will discover you OR are you going to boost your PR, pitch to a high level crowd of a thousand bloggers, industry journalists, investors [...]

eBuddy signs million dollar mobile advertising deal with inMobi

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 11th, 2010
eBuddy Co-founder Onno Bakker announced today at Plugg that eBuddy signed a million dollar plus deal (for one year) with mobile advertising network inMobi to sell part of eBuddy’s mobile inventory. eBuddy is one of the biggest IM companies worldwide. Last week Twitter surpassed 10 billion tweets. That is a lot, right…? Now look at the numbers [...]

Dilemma: What do you ask a guy like Richard Branson?

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 5th, 2010
Occasionally we all ask ourselves, “oh, if I ever get the chance to meet this person I’d walk up to him/her and say ” and by the time your dream comes true you’re standing there with your mouth open gazing at your hero and the only thing you can think of saying is: “Hi..I’m a [...]

Announcing The Next Web Paypal X Startup Rally

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on March 2nd, 2010
The Next Web Conference is full of interesting and inspiring talks, but since the first edition back in 2006 we have given the hottest and most promising startups a platform to show their service/app/product to the “best audience in the world” (at least according to Andrew Keen). Many startups have used The Next Web Conference to [...]

Sellaband now claims a possible acquisition, who’s kidding who?

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on February 24th, 2010
Yesterday we reported that Sellaband filed for bankruptcy and this had been granted by the Court in Amsterdam. Now Sellaband CEO Johan Vosmeijer has come up with a new story for their community and Techcrunch has picked this one up. On the website a message from the CEO has been posted stating that the Amsterdam Lawyer who [...]

Sellaband Files For Bankruptcy

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on February 23rd, 2010
Sellaband, the once beloved Dutch music startup that lets fans invest in their favorite bands filed for bankruptcy yesterday and today the Dutch court approved the request. (see picture below) The Sellaband website says it is down for maintenance, but on their support pages they admit they are in the deadpool. Sellaband allowed artists to raise the money from [...]

Doing business at The Next Web Conference; Investors meet Europe’s most talented Startups

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on February 22nd, 2010
One of the main drivers of attending any conference are the people that are attending. Meeting someone face-to-face makes a big difference and a conference helps you to meet many people in a short period of time. Well that is at least if it is a good conference (like TNW). Take this example: You’re an investor [...]

Personal Finance Startup Yunoo raises around €1 million in Funding

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on January 21st, 2010
Yunoo, the public choice winner of The Next Web Startup Rally 2009 raised more than 1 million euros a significant amount in series A today from Sanoma Digital Netherlands (a big publisher). Yunoo was looking for a million euros, Sanoma stated that they invested a big amount and although the exact amount officially hasn’t been [...]

The Vibe of The Next Web

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on January 16th, 2010
Back in 2006 Boris and I begun thinking about organizing a conference. That thinking lasted exactly 1 minute and the decision was made, a domain name was registered and the first speaker (Michael Arrington) was contacted. I’ve discussed the history of TNW in an earlier post. Since the first conference up until now, preparing for the [...]

How to create a music video clip 2010 style

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on January 13th, 2010
So this is how you produce a Music Video Clip 2010 Style. You ask your fans to turn on their webcam, mimic a frame they get presented and upload it. One frame at a time and together with other visitors you become part of the latest video of C-Mon & Kypski. Already 7000 people joined the [...]

James Surowiecki, Author of Wisdom of Crowds, on Powering Crowdsourcing

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on January 13th, 2010

Announcing The Next Web Conference 2010 (fifth edition)

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on January 6th, 2010
We are very happy to announce The Next Web Conference 2010 today. This fifth edition will be held on 27, 28 and 29 April, 2010 in the heart of the European technology scene (well at least for that week) and the city we love so much: Amsterdam. The Next Web Conference has become a must for [...]

The Twitter Pyramid of Shit

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on December 23rd, 2009
Funnily enough, my Mom sent me this picture. I don’t know where she got it from (I’ll update it later if I know the source), but it is pretty funny. The question is.. who are the top level guys that are considered assholes?

MyBlogLog to be killed. What went wrong and 3 awesome alternatives. (Updated)

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on December 23rd, 2009
Over the past few months we have heard a lot of rumors about MyBlogLog. A service that Today our friends at ReadWriteWeb broke the story that Yahoo is about to kill MyBlogLog. Inside MyBlogLog It was obvious that Yahoo was struggling with ideas with exactly what to do with MBL after they had acquired it for $10 [...]

How the Creative Class is Affecting the Way Businesses Think

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on December 13th, 2009
Would you like to ask Richard Florida, best selling author of The Rise of the Creative Class, a question? If so, tomorrow is your chance. HP input | output is doing a series of interviews with some of the smartest people on the planet (the previous edition was with Chris Anderson). The interview will be live [...]

Its conference season, time to get out. We get you a discount or free entrance

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on October 18th, 2009
Holidays are over, it is time to get back to work and do business. There are many cool conferences coming up that you can attend. The Next Web is Media Partner of some of the best and hottest Internet conferences out there. We will be present at many of these ourselves, so if you go [...]

Popular Android app Layar now available on iPhone

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on October 14th, 2009
Layar, the Amsterdam based company that brings augmented reality to your phone (we covered them from the start, including the launch of their API and the introduction of 3D objects) has an iPhone app and it’s live in the App Store. Layar is one of the most popular Android applications so far, with over 75k downloads [...]

Twitter spammers are fighting back, a new wave of “ROFL This is you” spam

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on October 14th, 2009
About a month ago we blogged about the phishing scam on twitter that sent a dm with the text “rofl this you on here“. It looked like twitter had controlled the situation and that this phishing attack was over. Now, the spammers have found a new way in, and this time they send a dm with [...]

Skype interview in sauna: AT&T to open up 3G network for Voip calls

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on October 7th, 2009
AT&T announced that they will be opening up their 3G network for VoIP calls on the iPhone soon. This is big news for iPhone users but also for companies that thrive on VoIP technology, companies like Skype. I’m in the capital of Estonia and the city with deep Skype roots, Tallinn. Skype has an office here [...]

Tell us what you think of us

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on October 6th, 2009
In January 2008 we launched The Next Web and since then we’ve posted daily industry news, articles, startup reviews and unique stories/perspectives on technology. Now, 20 months down the road and we’ve managed to grow to 600k unique visitors in our last month. We’re clearly proud of this achievement, but as we see it, this is [...]

Interview with Kodak’s CMO about the web and their new amazing Flip killer

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on September 24th, 2009
I’d hardly stepped onto my feet on Dutch soil (coming over from TC50 and DEMO) when I found myself interviewing Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, Kodak’s Chief Marketing Officer, with my brand new iPod Nano. What I didn’t know at that time was that Jeffrey had a new Kodak Zi8 pocket video camera with him and that [...]

Digsby aims at mainstream twitter users with new product (interview with CEO)

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on September 23rd, 2009
Digsby launched a new desktop client of their service today at DEMO that is designed for mainstream social media users. Digsby is a desktop application that allows for simultanious management of your IM, e-mail, and social network accounts (Facebook and Twitter). Their new client is cool and can be recommended to mainstream Twitter users and [...]

Ladies, you’ll love this. Datecheck: look up before you hook up (video included) DEMOfall

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on September 23rd, 2009
So here is an interesting company, DateCheck, an iPhone app made by Intelius. DateCheck lets you instantly do a background check on your date. The app shows you immediately info on your phone like if the guy is actually who he says he is, if he’s married or not, where he lives, his net worth [...]

Fuzemeeting is a cool web app for online meetings via web and phone launching at DEMOfall

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on September 22nd, 2009
Today a very cool new tool for web meetings launches at DEMO. FUZEmeeting is an easy to use online web service that allows you to set up meetings from any browser or iPhone. The demo they gave was really impressive and showed a live meeting with their offices, the DEMO stage and an iPhone, sharing videos, [...]

Waze launches crowdsourced navigation app: One hell of a good example of how location could benefit us all.

Posted by Patrick de Laive Follow Patrick de Laive on twitter on September 22nd, 2009
Waze is a company to watch. They are based in Israel and are launching their US service today at DEMO. I heard about Waze last week when I had drinks with some Israeli people (thanks for mentioning Tal). Waze is the number one traffic resource in Israel, by providing real time information about traffic jams to [...]