running round the valley II

Following up on the recent post on twitter’s fast growth, Zynga and Ning have grown just as much in the last year. In fact, Zynga has grown even more than twitter, having started at a lower base. Ning is a social networking site that lets users create their own social networks. Zynga is social/casual game company, [...]

China is an economic superpower with the world’s third largest GDP ($4.2 trillion), behind only the US ($14.3 trillion) and Japan ($4.8 trillion). However, despite almost catching Japan in total GDP, China’s GDP per capita is only 1/6 that of Japan’s (and 1/8 that of the US’s). This sets China apart and means its future [...]

Instead of spending money on a date, you could spend money on your pet during this downturn. Tyson Foods thinks there’s a growth opportunity in the pet market and will be making pet food in addition to human food. In fact, they will be making high-end pet food that needs to be refrigerated (lucky dogs!), [...]

Surprisingly or not, dating sites and match makers are doing well despite the economy. A segment on NPR today reported that eharmony.com has more web traffic during stock market dips and that match.com has 20 percent more members this December than last. It must be true what they say – that sex always sells. I [...]

twitter has been growing like crazy. check out their amazing growth over the last few months. here’s a comparison of twitter traffic vs like.com traffic on compete.com.

top line is twitter. also, notice that compete.com is advertising their twitter page on the right.
the strong growth is fueling speculators such as Jason Calacanis who want to buy [...]

This week, a whopping 93 percent of underwater google options were swapped by google employees participating in a program that allowed those holding stock options with strike prices above the current stock value to swap them for new options with a strike price of $308.57. Those holding that 7 percent must be kicking themselves. Hopefully [...]

when twitter first came out, i thought it was the biggest waste of time. people tweeting about picking their noses and goofing off. however, amidst all the noise of useless tweets, twitter can be very valuable for a number of things:

twitter search is actually a great way to find out what people are thinking and [...]

Which one should I get? It’s mac vs pc all over again.
Last year about 14 million iphones were sold while only about 1 million gphones were sold. The iphone app marketplace is teaming with more apps (and buyers). But a recent report predicts that by 2012, gphones will outsell iphones. Android’s open environment is more [...]

I started my blog ”running round the valley” about my life in Silicon Valley almost four years ago. That was around the time I joined Ojos, a startup aiming to search everyone’s photos. Ojos became riya.com (photo search applied to all your photos – I worked on face detection and recognition), then riya became like.com (visual [...]