Mashable

Mashable – Web 2.0 Blog

This great blog has 5 million monthly readers so you know they must be doing something right. They publish “breaking news on what’s new on the web”. This ranges from new online companies, new social networks and new ways that users are navigating the internet. For instance this morning they ran stories on how to become an influencer on Twitter, why Facebook was going to have more user’s than MySpace, that the RIAA is going to stop suing people, how to monetize social media applications, etc, etc.  Great blog to throw on your reader.

Once You’re Lucky, Twice Your Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and The Rise of Web 2.0 by Sarah Lacy

http://sarahlacy.typepad.com/sarahlacy/

If you want to sound like your in the know, the cool kids call it web twenty, web 2.0 is for posers according to Sarah. In fact if you want to sound like your in the know about the inner workings of facebook, digg, slide, blogger, six apart and any of the other great new silicon valley startups, read this book. And unlike many of the other books I review, this one is far from technical. Its really a fun read, something to keep next to your bed at night or to read on the beach.

Sarah Lacy shares with us the lives of the great internet entrepreneurs. She explores what happened during the dot-com bust and how there is a new round of growth coming out of those ashes. She definitely has an in in the valley and was able to score interviews with the biggest names. People such as Max Levchin who founded billion dollar company PayPal and soon to be Slide. Marc Andreessen who started Netscape and is now working on Ning, while investing in twitter, delicous, digg and others. Sarah makes it known that there is a small group of people in the Valley who are responsible for the bulk of all the new innovation. These people all work together, fund each others projects, mentor each other and compete, further pushing the boundaries of the web. And she makes it clear that the king of this group is Mark Zuckerberg, the face behind facebook.

I highly recommend this read if you want to learn more about the lives of the people who made online social networking possible, or more simply put, the people who have made the internet the amazing tool we use on a daily basis. This is their story and is well worth the read.

p. 167 “It may be hard to understand why Facebook could be worth billions unless you’re in high school or college. Facebook started as an online directory of pictures and contact information for a school’s student body, but as it has grown, it has become much more. People have uploaded so many photos to their profile pages that Facebook is now the largest photo-sharing site on the Web, far out pacing Slide or FlickR. People upload video too. It’s no stretch to imagine a day when Facebook displays more daily videos than YouTube. People blog on the site. They message one another through the site. They even plan events on the site, rather than using another Web site such as Evite. Need to buy a new TV? Facebook has classifieds too. For people in college and to a lesser extent in high school, Facebook is like an Internet within the Internet. They log on in the morning, check their email, and open Facebook. A full two thirds of users come to the site every single day.”