News Panel with Brian Alvey and Dave Mathews #171

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Jul302011

Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 12:20AM

News Panel with Brian Alvey and Dave Mathews #171

TWiST #171 News Panel with Brian Alvey and Dave Mathews
Two opinionated guests, one roundtable--a whole lot of news. This week saw Brian Alvey of Crowd Fusion and Dave Mathews of NeuAer debating Airbnb's big PR crisis, Google's new offering (hotels!) and the people everyone loves to hate, patent trolls.

0:00-1:30 It’s our news Roundtable Friday.
1:30-1:45 Welcome everyone and to Tyler, coming to us from Lake Tahoe.
1:45-3:00 Welcome to Dave Mathews, the founder of NeuAer.
3:00-4:00 Brian Alvey on the line from NYC.
4:00-4:15 Also with us is Kirin Kalia, the managing editor of LAUNCH.
4:15-6:30 Thank you to MailChimp for sponsoring the show.
6:30-7:00 First story: Airbnb goes into damage control mode after vandalism. (See the story on LAUNCH here: http://launch.is/blog/airbnb-confirms-insurance-in-case-your-pad-gets-trashed.html)
7:00-7:45 Is this bad or a good opportunity for Airbnb, Brian?
7:45-8:45 What do you think, Dave?
8:45-10:15 Tyler, do you use Airbnb?
10:15-11:00 Dave: But she took precautions and this still happened.
11:00-12:00 This could be a really good thing to happen for Airbnb.
12:00-13:00 Next story: Brands you follow on Twitter will now take top placement with their tweets. Will this make Twitter a significant amount of money?
13:00-15:00 Why did this take Twitter so long? What do you think, Brian?
15:00-15:30 Are you using Google+ more than Twitter?
15:30-17:00 Dave: To me, Google+ is like FriendFeed.
17:00-20:15 Kirin: Do they use the same algorithm for brand pages and personal pages on Facebook?
20:15-21:00 Next story: AT&T is going to limit data rates to improve the performance of their network.
21:00-23:00 What do you think, Dave? What is LTE?
23:00-24:00 Why don’t they roll out high speed Wifi everywhere?
24:00-25:15 What do you think, Brian, what’s holding us back?
25:15-25:45 Kirin: Why are we behind in the US in wireless infrastructure?
25:45-27:30 Jason’s idea for a startup: Community, demand-based fiber. Get people together on your block and it will be like Kickstarter for fiber!
27:30-30:00 Thank you to Carbonite for sponsoring the show. Everyone go to Carbonite.com. Brian, are you using Carbonite yet?
30:00-32:00 Next story: Spotify has already been sued for patent infringement. What is wrong with our system?
32:00-34:30 Dave explains the patent that Spotify is being accused of infringing.
34:30-36:15 Should the storage of an mp3 that’s been encrypted really be defensible?
36:15-36:45 And the patent is good for 20 years from the filing so they can shake people down until April of 2015?
36:45-37:30 Do you think we can go 10 or 12 years from the issue date?
37:30-40:00 Next story: Google and Facebook have ramped up lobbying efforts. Is the amount they’re spending significant?
40:00-42:00 Any thoughts on why they’re spending this money? Is it all about relationship building, Brian?
42:00-43:30 Next story: Google has launched an experimental hotel finder (see it at www.google.com/hotelfinder). What does this mean for other hotel deal sites?
43:30-44:45 If this is what the DOJ is looking into, why would Google do this?
44:45-47:15 Brian, what do you think?
47:15-50:00 Next story: Expedia and Groupon see almost a near sell-out of their first travel deal offerings. What’s next for Groupon in terms of partnerships?
50:00-51:45 Brian: It’s like buying traffic for a person who comes to a website once and then bounces.
51:45-53:30 Next story: Mark Suster said in a Business Insider interview that the VCs who are saying “no bubble” publicly are privately admitting that there is one. So what should we believe--bubble or no?
53:30-55:15 When Microsoft valued Facebook at $10B and then it went to $20-30B, that’s when everyone realized things were getting ridiculous.
55:15-57:30 Brian, have you raised your B round? What are you saying?
57:30-58:30 What are you thinking as an entrepreneur? When are you going to raise another round, Brian?
58:30-59:30 If you have an unlimited amount of cash to invest, it does not matter what you bought into the A round at.
59:30-1:01:00 Next story: Apple ditches the DVD drive in the new Mac mini. Was this premature?
1:01:00-1:02:00 Jason: It’s like a hot girlfriend who always insists on order the special.
1:02:00-1:04:00 Next story: A tweet from a DJ shuts down an LA street when 1000 people show up for a party. How dumb was that?
1:04:00-1:05:15 So what happens to the DJ? Is he liable?
1:05:15-1:06:00 Last story: The Google Logitech TV Revue price has now dropped to $99. What happened here?
1:06:00-1:07:00 Jason explains what Google should have done when releasing this device.
1:07:00-1:08:30 Brian, would you buy this?
1:08:30-1:11:00 Thank you to Carbonite and MailChimp for making this show possible.
1:11:00-1:12:00 Everyone search for and download ToothTag for your Android phone and everyone get your term sheets into Brian Alvey at brian@crowdfusion.com.

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