Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 7)

SM: Travel is a “context” that has great relevance for your business. JH: We think about that opportunity a lot. What is nice about our business is our customers engage with us frequently throughout the year. We drive our business in a couple of ways. First, you have your typical holidays.

Deal Radar 2008: Glam Media’s Fashion Forays

Glam Media is a women-focused distributed media network that represents and packages content from over 400 sources including fashion blogs, websites and magazines. Along with Glam.com, its flagship, it brings together content relevant to women while giving advertisers an efficient access to fragmented inventory. It is one of the companies we covered earlier in Women

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Deal Radar 2008: Groople, Interesting Use of Context

Groople is an online group travel site, which helps with searching, planning and booking group travel. (Read my Interview with Groople CEO Mike Stacy) Groople is different from Expedia and Kayak in that it serves only group travelers, no individuals, and is thus a great focus on a specific “Context“.

Vertical Travel Ad Network CEO Cree Lawson (Part 10)

SM: What are your thoughts about exit? CL: I don’t think Elvis will leave the building for a long time yet. We’ve certainly had offers that would have made me a very wealthy man, or at least a guy with a very loud car stereo.

Trend Radar 2008: Verticalization Everywhere

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know, I am a huge believer in verticalization of the web. In fact, my entire Web 3.0 thesis is based on this idea. In 2007, we saw the beginnings of verticalization. In 2008, I expect this trend to become rampant in all aspects of the

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Trend Radar 2008: Simplicity in Design

Simplicity and reduction in design are going to be the mantras in 2008, as industrial designers look for ways to make technology more human-centric. We are faced with the daunting challenge of delivering convergence devices with umpteen functions without losing the user. We are also faced with the challenge of delivering highly personalized user experiences

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Deal Radar 2008: Kayak Consolidates Travel

As we have discussed, Online Travel is a large category, and active in entrepreneurship. Web 1.0 produced giant companies (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline), and in Web 2.0 we have a couple of vertical search engines that are pulling ahead. Kayak, the world’s largest travel search engine, receives more than 6 million unique visitors per month.

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Microsoft, The Sleeping Giant

In 2008, I hope Microsoft wakes up. With Google and Apple going gangbusters, Microsoft has threats coming at it from every direction. As we discussed earlier, Microsoft earned revenues of $13.76 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2007, a 27% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and

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