Introducing ReadWriteWeb’s New COO: Sean Ammirati

I’m pleased to announce a new executive appointment to ReadWriteWeb, our new Chief Operating Officer Sean Ammirati. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, Sean has been an occasional writer on ReadWriteWeb since March 2007 and hosted our podcast show ReadWriteTalk. Prior to becoming ReadWriteWeb’s COO, Sean was Co-Founder & CEO at venture-backed startup mSpoke. He’s also been … Read more

Totally Virtual: How ReadWriteWeb Operates

Recently I was the keynote speaker at the Unlimited Potential W2W (Wellington to the World) event in Wellington, New Zealand. The topic of my presentation was running a virtual company. In the presentation, written by our Marketing Manager Elyssa Pallai, I spoke about the unique nature of ReadWriteWeb’s virtual business model and culture. Watch the … Read more

Your Favorite Mobile Apps of 2009 (Reader Survey)

A year ago we polled you, the ReadWriteWeb community, on your favorite mobile apps. It’s become an annual tradition to run this survey, so in this post we’re collecting your top 5 lists for 2009. To get you inspired, the ReadWriteWeb team have listed their personal favorites below. We first ran this poll in November … Read more

The Most Influential Websites in the World: Wikipedia #1, Twitter #4 With a Bullet

A year ago we profiled an oddly-named service called ://URLFAN, which we concluded was a good ‘Influence Index’ for the Web. ://URLFAN ranks websites by popularity, based on blog mentions. Unlike analytics services like Alexa or Compete, ://URLFAN doesn’t measure website traffic. It’s similar to Technorati, only ://URLFAN ranks all websites and not just blogs. … Read more

Mint Data Shows Online Retail Rebounding

Last night we wrote about Forrester’s prediction that online holiday retail sales will grow 8% this year to $44.7 billion. comScore had similar numbers about the growth of online retail – toy web sites grew 9% in October, as did the retail apparel segment. Online personal finance service Mint.com has joined the festive statistics parade, … Read more

Online Retail Thriving: 8% Growth Expected This Holiday Season

Yesterday we reviewed the past decade in online retailing. Today we look at some forward-looking statistics about e-commerce. In particular we analyze the upcoming holiday season and how online retailers can expect to fare. Amazon.com was founded in 1995, but it famously didn’t make its first annual profit until 2003. Those days of struggle for … Read more

Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce

Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. eBay, in particular, is beginning to lose ground. In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and … Read more

A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP’s Ambitious Sensor Network

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announced a project that aims to be a “Central Nervous System for the Earth” (CeNSE). It’s a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of “tiny, … Read more

Ad-Driven Content – Is it Crossing The Line?

Yesterday we wrote about how Demand Media produces 4,000 new pieces of content every day – and whether it can sustain quality at that scale. There was vigorous discussion about the quality issue in the comments, including from some of Demand Media’s thousands of freelance writers. In this follow-up post, we look at the type … Read more

How Demand Media Produces 4,000 Pieces of Content a Day

In August we reviewed Demand Media, one of the largest producers of content on the Web today. Wired Magazine recently compared Demand Media’s content business to Henry Ford’s production line for cars. Demand Media currently produces 4,000 new pieces of content a day. What’s more, it’s increasingly syndicating this content to media sites outside of … Read more