Author: Chris Cameron

Last week we told you about how Chevrolet, a division of General Motors, was bringing an augmented reality (AR) marketing promotion to SXSW in Austin. Now General Motors is kicking it up a notch with some experimental technology that will bring the world of AR to car windshields and provide a heads-up-display (HUD) experience.

The new technology, still very much in the testing phase, uses an array of sensors which track both objects on or near the road, as well as the position and angle of a driver’s head and eyes. By combining the data from these sensors, GM can then project images onto the windshield with lasers to help drivers stay safe when driving.

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“Let’s say you’re driving in fog,” says Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM’s research and development. “We could use the vehicle’s infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could ‘paint’ the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is,” Seder said.

In other words, it would be like having a fighter pilot’s HUD in your car, except instead of tracking the sky for bogies, your car tracks the road for possible dangers. The display works by coating the windshield with transparent phosphors which emit light when excited by a laser. GM says this is better for the driver because the entire windshield can be used to display information, not just a portion of it like current in-car HUD systems. The technology also includes the ability to recognize and read road signs and alert the driver to when they are driving too fast or if construction is ahead.

The company says that while this exact technology will not be in any cars in the near future, some of the features will start to be rolled into upcoming models. What this likely means is the transparent phosphor windshield will be placed in cars and used to display other HUD information, like speed, gas and other indicators.

The hard part of this technology doesn’t seem to be displaying it; rather, the barrier is in the sensor work between tracking objects on the road and tracking the position and angle of the driver’s eyes. Since it’s much easier to simply display objects that don’t rely on exact positioning for the driver’s point-of-view, it’s likely we’ll see these additions before the true AR experience becomes a reality.

Eventually, however, GM hopes technology like this will make for better turn-by-turn directions and make it easier to find locations upon arrival. We’ve all heard our GPS systems say, “You have arrived at your location!” only to look around and not necessarily know where it is. With this new system, GM hopes they can solve the problem of “the last 100 yards” by displaying indicators of specific locations based on the sensor readings.

This certainly seems like the future of driving, but I wonder if it will be displaced by cars that simply drive themselves. If we can create sensors good enough to find the lanes in the road and nearby vehicles, why not just let the car drive it self and skip the HUD? Either way, its great to see AR taking steps forward beyond marketing and into practical application in a consumer space, even if it is years in the future.

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News broke yesterday that popular online Q&A startup Formspring.me had raised some $2.5 million in venture funding and would be relocating to Silicon Valley from Indianapolis. As a user and fan of the service, I am happy to see the company rewarded for its success, and I am excited to see how they can improve their already great product. However, as a follower of the national and global startup culture, it is a little disappointing to see the company leave their home and head west to the Valley.

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Formspring.me was spun out of Formspring.com, a platform for creating online forms, when users began creating forms to answer personal questions. According to the New York Times’ Brad Stone, Formspring.me has raked in $2.5 million from investors based solely in Silicon Valley. VC firms Baseline Ventures and Freestyle Capital teamed with angels Kevin Rose, Dave Morin and Ron Conway’s SV Angel to provide Formspring.me with some well deserved, and high profile funding.

Silicon Valley is certainly the mecca of venture capital and social web applications, and in many ways, moving the company to the Valley is a smart move. As we mentioned back in January, Formspring.me plans to rewrite its application to scale more efficiently as the product grows in popularity – something that requires talented programmers. The company has already listed four job openings in San Francisco for a pair of developers, a designer and a data analyst.

By moving to the Valley, Formspring.me will be able to tap the enormous talent pools to find top tier programmers and designers to take their app to the next level. If they want to build out an API and create mobile applications for their app, they are in the right place to do it. When the time comes to look for further funding, having set up shop in the Valley will certainly benefit the company in their efforts.

For other cities outside of the Valley looking to build competitive startup and venture capital communities, these are unfortunate truths. It is not uncommon to see successful startups leave their cities of birth for the Valley to find talented employees and raise their chances for finding funding. We recently discussed Chicago’s growing startup scene, which is not far from Indianapolis, but the opportunities in the Midwest do not yet compare to those available in other booming startup cities.

Had Formspring.me been founded in a city like Austin, Boulder, New York or Boston, they would have likely remained there upon receiving funding. That is, perhaps, if they received funding locally. While the Midwest is growing its startup culture, there are far fewer VC firms, and far smaller talent pools when compared to other locations. Until more cities have their own thriving startup scene, stories like Formspring.me’s will continue to play out across the country.

The fact that Formspring.me attracted funding from the Valley before relocating raises the question of whether the decision to move was theirs or if it was a recommendation or stipulation of the investors. We have reached out for comment on this question and will update this post as more information becomes available. In the meantime, let us know what you think of Formspring.me or any other startup moving to the Valley in the comments.

UPDATE: We received a response to the question from the company’s President John Wechsler on his Formspring.me page. Wechsler explains that the decision to move to San Francisco was was made by the team and was not part of the terms of the funding agreement.

Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb

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More often than not, an entrepreneur with a great idea looking for funding will pitch his or her startup dozens, if not hundreds of times to potential investors. There is an endless amount of resources out there for entrepreneurs looking to learn the best practices for their pitch, including what to include in their decks, how long to speak, and what pitfalls to avoid. By the time an entrepreneur actually gets funding, they’ve probably mastered their pitch to a point where they could recite it in their sleep and provide advice of their own to newcomers. The problem with this is they can get stuck in their pitch mentality and it can creep into areas of their business that need the ole straight talk express.

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Michael Hirshland of Polaris Venture Partners, who blogs under the name VCMike, wrote today about a problem he often sees when in board meetings with startups. The issue is that entrepreneurs are so used to speaking a certain way to VCs that they sometimes have a pitch-like tone that gets in the way of board room progress. As Hirshland points out, don’t try to beat around the bush when it comes to bad news.

“VCs hear bad news all the time — it is part of the startup process and part of the VC job description,” says Hirshland. “Any VC worth his or her salt should respond to bad news, provided it is shared in a timely fashion, by helping the entrepreneur figure out the best way to respond rather than dwelling on what went wrong.”

He advises CEOs to stear clear of attempts to placate their board members by spouting off excuses for whatever their bad news is, or by claiming that they are already fixing the problem in hopes of avoiding any impending wrath. From what Hirshland says, board members are not schoolmasters there to punish you and whip you into shape; they are there to help, so don’t isolate yourself, he says. If you speak openly and honestly about your issues with your board, chances are you will preserve your most valued asset as an entrepreneur and as a startup: credibility.

“Early stage ventures are filled with ambiguity. Entrepreneurs and their investors need to make quick decisions based on information that is far from complete,” says Hirshland. “This necessitates relying to a very substantial degree on the entrepreneurs’ interpretation of the situation and prospects.”

In other words, you are the eyes and ears for your board, and if you aren’t being open and honest with them, bad things will happen. Worst of all, speaking with fluff and rounding out the rough edges of your company will destroy your credibility, which Hirshland calls “toxic” to your partnership and “not a happy place for either the entrepreneur or the investor.”

As we mentioned earlier this week, credibility is your best friend when trying to get funded, so make sure you carry it with you and preserve it in your board meetings and into your company’s future. Save the pitching for future rounds of fundraising, and when it comes to your board members, don’t try to win them over, simply treat them like equal members of your team.

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It’s human nature – we are wired to be averse to change. When something new comes into our lives, we inherently approach it with caution, and at times, with negativity and hostility; but if that change is fundamentally good and right, it will gradually become widely accepted. For startups, especially those in the early stages of existence, changes come frequently and now and then in large chunks, which can be jarring for users who may have just become accustomed to the previous version of a product.

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Anyone who uses Facebook knows that even the slightest changes in UI or the shuffling of features can create a cacophony of public outcry in the form of “I Like The Old Facebook Better!!” groups. But the interesting thing about those groups is that they eventually fizzle out and people get used to the new version of the site. Change takes time.

So what are startups to do when an updated version of their product or service sets off a firestorm of hate mail from previously pleased users? Well, for starters, make sure you’re not taking a Borg-like approach by assimilating customers into submission; forcing things on people never goes over well. Secondly, as crowdSPRING co-founder Ross Kimbarovsky advises, take the time to listen to your users; after all, they are the ones using your product day-to-day and they probably have a few good ideas.

“You have to be patient, you have to give your customers and your community some room, some time to react, to criticize, to discuss, to debate,” says Kimbarovsky in a recent video blog. “You can’t harshly tell them ‘this is the way it is and that’s it’, because it will close off communications and make it sound like you don’t care what they say.”

There also may be a chance to bring about the change gradually as to not upset your customers with sudden drastic changes. Kimbarovsky recounts an example in which eBay wanted to change its background color from yellow to white, so instead of flipping a switch, they slowly changed the background to a lighter shade of yellow day-by-day until the background was white. But for the most part, changes can’t always be long and drawn out like eBay’s color choices, so Kimbarovsky simply says to engage with your customers when they react and let their voices be heard.

“After a short amount of time, if your change is good, if it’s reasonable and if it’s meant to improve as you believe it is, then your customers and your community will understand it,” says Kimbarovsky. “And if it’s not, then you will understand that it just isn’t working.”

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In the wake of the financial meltdown, a new set of financial regulations proposed by Senator Christopher Dodd aimed at plugging the “too big to fail” loopholes could have some negative side effects for the angel investment community. According to a report from the Seattle-based site TechFlash, Dodd’s bill would require that angel investments be approved by the SEC, a process that could take as many as 120 days to complete.

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But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The enormous reform bill (some 1300+ pages) also gives the SEC the ability to delegate regulatory authority to state governments on investments it deems too small in size or scope. Angel investors themselves could be place under the regulatory microscope as well; the bill wants to raise the income level it takes to become an accredited investor, perhaps even doubling the requirement.

Not only would this bill make the process of attaining seed-stage funding more difficult, more expensive, and more time consuming, it goes against the government’s goal to create jobs in America. If these regulations become law, fewer startups will get funding because they won’t want to deal with the lengthy SEC filing process.

Instead, more innovative ideas will go by the wayside, startups will not get funding, and jobs will not be created. Furthermore, by raising the requirements to provide angel funding, the pool of investors will shrink, which will only exacerbate the problems facing the nation’s already floundering venture capital industry that is only recently seeing signs of recovery. In a letter sent to Senator Dodd earlier this month, Mark Heesen, President of the National Venture Capital Association, and Marianne Hudson, Executive Director of the Angel Capital Association, together outlined their grievances with the bill and its danger towards the VC industry.

“Venture capitalists often invest in companies that were supported by angels, so ensuring that regulations for accredited investors do not harm this capital source is important,” said Heesen and Hudson. “In addition, as more and more venture capital firms co-invest with angel investors and angel organizations, the state preemption of securities regulations could extend to a large number of businesses, from start-ups to others that need capital for growth.”

What do you think of this bill? It seems to me the sections mentioned above will be in direct conflict with the Startup Visa movement which most of the startup community seems to be on board with. The distinction seems obviously clear: encouraging foreign entrepreneurs to start their companies in America will create jobs, and this new bill from Senator Dodd will prevent the creation of jobs by thinning out angel investments. Let us know your thoughts below in the comments.

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Back in early February, while aboard a red-eye to New York, Dave McClure wrote a long, humorous, rambling, profanity-laden rant of a blog post that focused on startup business models. While it makes for an entertaining read, McClure’s post is also very insightful and makes a solid case for why startups should shift from advertising models and instead build their new businesses on subscriptions and micropayments. Earlier this month I had the chance to visit the headquarters of ZooLoo, a startup that witnessed this very shift first-hand with their own business model.

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During my visit I spoke with Aaron Baer, Director of Communications at the Scottsdale-based ZooLoo, a site that provides individuals with the ability to share and manage content on their own domain. Like many startups in the past decade, ZooLoo opened for business under an advertising business model, but eventually caught on to the changing trend McClure evangelized on his blog.

“[ZooLoo’s original model] was an advertising platform, we had a shopping page, we would do affiliate marketing, you could buy and order prints off of our website – we had a very broad business model,” says Baer. “We discovered that didn’t work.”

They also realized that it wasn’t the model their customers wanted. Under the old model, users were presented with two options: a free basic service, and a premium service with more features in an “all or nothing,” fashion. Customers complained that they wanted to upgrade and purchase premium services, but that they weren’t willing to pony up the full price for a bunch of other features they didn’t want.

In January, ZooLoo fundamentally changed their business model by creating a storefront through which customers could pick and choose features on a micropayment level. Now if a user wants to purchase their own domain name, but doesn’t want to pay for ZooLoo’s SEO services, they can do that instead of being forced into picking from a tiered package.

While customer feedback was a substantial motivator for the change, Baer says that potential investors also played a role in the addition of the storefront. “The investors said, ‘You have a solid product, but I want to see you find a better way to package it, and a better way to sell it’,” he says.

And the change worked. Since adding their micropayment storefront, ZooLoo has seen an increase in purchases of their premium services. The company is making more money marketing virtual goods in a micropayment system than they were when they bundled everything together at a higher price and relied on advertising and affiliate marketing. This is the exact paradigm shift in online marketing that Dave McClure preaches in his post mentioned earlier.

“Gradually we are discovering that the default revenue model on the internet should probably be the simplest one,” writes McClure. “That is: basic transactions for physical or digital goods, and recurring transactions (aka subscriptions) for repeat usage.”

Without repeat usage, McClure says that the biggest obstacle in the way of getting users on board with micropayments is that they forget their password. Honestly, if I was asked to login to my Amazon or PayPal accounts right now, I would be playing a guessing game with a handful of passwords because I don’t use those services too often. But for iTunes, Google and Facebook – the services McClure says will be the leaders in eCommerce login in five years – I use those every day, and surely remember my password.

ZooLoo realizes this too, which is why they foster repeat usage by connecting their services with Twitter, Facebook, and other popular online social networks. Users can also log into ZooLoo using Facebook Connect, which eliminates the problem of remembering a less frequently used password. ZooLoo and Baer are fully on board with this emerging model, and suggest others hop on as well.

“There is this social media bubble forming where all these services are saying, ‘We’re free, come use us!’, but eventually those services need to make money,” says Baer. “We think micropayments are the next big thing.”

Photo by Flickr user r-z.

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As the month of March trudges on, we are getting closer each day to spring and eventually summer when numerous startup incubators hold their camps for early-stage companies. Many incubators are still taking submissions, including TechStars Boulder, but in case of Y Combinator, the deadline has since come and gone. Theoryville is a startup that has already been asked to interview for a spot with Y Combinator, so if you are still looking to apply for one of this summer’s incubators, you may want to heed its founder’s advice.

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Trevor Burnham, co-founder of Theoryville, a startup looking to ease the process of sharing data and documents between professors and scientists, recently blogged about how his company managed to snag a highly-coveted in-person interview for Y Combinator. Burnham reveals that through the process of applying to several incubators, he and his partners realized some early mistakes they had made.

One important lesson they learned through their first set of interviews is that they hadn’t talked to anyone but themselves about the idea. After all, if you’re trying to create a service that will change the way scientists and college professors share information, shouldn’t you talk to them about what their needs are? Investors and organizations want to see more than a great idea; they want to know you’ve thought it out and have identified a specific audience that has needs. For Burnham and his team, after being shown the door a few times, they turned around and spoke with their “users,” even though they didn’t have a product to show.

“We started asking for input from every potential user we knew and sending cold e-​​mails by the dozen to [University of Michigan professors] to ask them to talk with us about their software needs,” writes Burnham on his blog. “Based on the feedback we were getting, our understanding of the market completely changed.”

If there is one thing startups can learn from the perilous launch of Google Buzz, its that getting feedback from users is a good thing to before launching; or in the case of Theoryville, before looking for funding or acceptance to an incubator. Burnham and his partners assumed that they needed a working demo before they could get any useful customer feedback, but in reality, there is much to be learned about your audience before you start building.

In fact, it makes a whole lot more sense to speak with the people you want to see using your product before you waste time, resources, and perhaps money on building an early prototype that they will snub their noses at. It’s a lot like making sure the plot of land you have chosen to build your house on is a solid and stable foundation. That is not to say, however, that building a demo does not lend itself to learning valuable lessons about your product.

“[Building a demo] led us to grapple with some design decisions that weren’t apparent when we were just using white boards and static mockups,” says Burnham. “That, in turn, gave us a more specific notion of what our product’s advantages are.”

So they checked the foundation before building, but when their house was done they realized that too many windows were facing west and catching the hot late-afternoon sun – a regrettable error and a lesson learned (especially for home builders where I’m from). Despite some changes that needed to be made, Burnahm says “it gave us some momentum, which we’re using to build a much-​​improved demo now.” So the best way to make early progress, it seems, would be to get that first rough draft out the door and begin iterating over and over on it; move some windows around until the latest version is a better, more mature version of your product.

It also seems like it helped that they had applied to earlier incubators before applying to Y Combinator. They also participated in TechStars For A Day in Boulder, where they not only learned a lot from the mentors but were able to network with potential users of their service in the area. Attending these events and applying to other incubators worked like spring training before a preliminary interview with Y Combinator via Skype, and it couldn’t have looked bad on their application either.

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We hear a lot about how starting a company takes some serious entrepreneurial DNA with traits like ambition, drive, relentlessness, and above all, passion. But some might argue that these are just the good sounding attributes that can lead to success; what about the other characteristics that may not sound so great? According to WePay co-founder Rich Aberman, starting a company also requires some arrogance and naïveté, so here’s his advice on founding a startup straight from the entrepreneurial front-lines.

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Aberman and his partner Bill Clerico started working on WePay, a site that helps groups and organizations collect money electronically, back in August of 2008 and have since raised $2 million in funding after participating in Y Combinator‘s incubator last summer. In a recent blog post, he equates starting a company for the first time to jumping in a boxing ring with “the champ” and thinking you can take him, hence the arrogance and naïveté; no matter how much work you’ve done to get ready for this moment, nothing has prepared you for the force of that first punch.

“Not working full time takes away almost all credibility,” writes Aberman on his company’s blog. “If your idea is so great, why haven’t you committed to it? Why should I invest and risk my money if you’re not even fully committed?”

Credibility, for first-time entrepreneurs, is crucial, he adds. One of his keys to successfully attaining venture funding is building credibility through traction. As Aberman points out, investors don’t necessarily look for the best ideas, but rather the best teams of entrepreneurs. When you don’t have a reputation to bring to the table, having traction for your product generates credibility that can catch the eyes of investors. Traction shows potential investors that there is a market for your idea – an advantage you’re going to need when trying to raise funds, especially if you’re not in Silicon Valley.

Aberman stepped on some toes when he said “unless you’re part of the Silicon Valley in-crowd and you have traction, you’re not going to raise venture capital,” but corrected himself in the comments on his blog and on Twitter. Undoubtedly, there is a much larger pool of cash in Silicon Valley, and Aberman points out that raising capital elsewhere is not entirely impossible, but what he meant was that raising capital in the Valley is harder without being part of “the in-crowd.”

His other suggestions focus on the importance of finding a passionate technical co-founder and submitting to the fact that customer acquisition is a constant uphill climb, but these ideas, as Aberman admits upfront, have “been made before, multiple times, by people smarter than myself.” The crux of his argument seems to focus on credibility, which generates an equation-like string of logic. Working full time on your project and generating traction creates the credibility that first-time startups need to break into the “in-crowd” of venture funding which relies heavily on reputation.

“How do first-time entrepreneurs gain momentum and raise money? They build something that people like and use,” says Aberman. “If you can do that, then you just have to convince VCs that you can keep doing what you’re doing.”

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Over the weekend, Frist Round Capital Entrepreneur in Residence Charlie O’Donnell wrote an interesting blog post that is making its way around the venture capital and startup communities and drawing a variety of responses. O’Donnell suggests that while some VCs began their careers as entrepreneurs, most native venture capitalists have trouble making the switch the other way. His reason behind this is that VCs operate with different goals, methods and mindsets which make the transition from VC to entrepreneur is an uphill climb.

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O’Donnell speaks from his own personal experiences as a VC who tried to start his own company, Path 101, which ultimately failed. “I learned a ton about what it really takes to drive a successful business forward–skills and a mindset that doesn’t necessarily square with the way venture investors think of the world,” he says.

One of the differences between VCs and entrepreneurs he points out is the type of employees each values. O’Donnell says VCs tend to look at the leadership and the entrepreneurs as the top priority employees, while entrepreneurs will tend to place higher importance on the people “in the trenches,” doing the programming and development. “Not many VCs really know how to evaluate team talent if they haven’t run a company before–and that’s a critical skill as an entrepreneur,” he says.

Another wedge between these two types of businessmen that he notes is that entrepreneurs focus much more about what they can do with the resources they have, while VCs are constantly looking at what a company needs. O’Donnell says switching these mindsets can be difficult and that he spent too much time thinking of creating the “next big thing,” rather than focusing on short-term goals and creating a solid foundation upon which to build.

Of course, as he points out, there are exceptions to the notion that a VC can’t become a successful entrepreneur. As a commenter on O’Donnell’s post points out, Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon began as an investor at Arbitrade and Bessemer Venture Partners before starting his own companies. Another commenter argues that its hard to make assumptions about this topic when the sample size of VCs trying to become entrepreneurs is relatively small.

Whether O’Donnell’s suggestion has validity or not is certainly an interesting discussion, but the real lesson to learn from his post comes from his personal experiences in failure. One of the reasons O’Donnell doesn’t think VCs make good entrepreneurs is that they may be prone to approaching the situation with advice for how to succeed permeating their brains. The trick is, success can be the product of any of a million different variables, and there is no single proven path to success. Instead, the best way to get there is to avoid failures.

Focus on the errors that most unsuccessful startups make and go out of your way to avoid them; more often than not you will find yourself inching closer and closer towards your goal this way. Just remember that errors and failures are not always things that were done that went wrong, they are sometimes things that were never done in the first place.

The question of whether VCs have a difficult time become entrepreneurs has drawn a mixed response so far from O’Donnell’s blog, so what do you think? Is the road between them marked by a one-way street? Or is one side just paved a little more smoothly? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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It’s Monday and that means that the Interactive portion of SXSW is drawing closer and closer to its close tomorrow after a weekend of great talks, panels, parties and overall hoopla. While some of the most fun parts of SXSW may be behind us, there are still a lot of great things to go see in Austin, especially for those in the startup and entrepreneurship communities. So if you’re looking for some interesting panels to attend before you catch your flight home later this week, here’s a run down of some of the remaining startup-related talks and events.

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This afternoon, a keynote interview with Twitter’s Evan Williams will surely provide any striving entrepreneur with some intriguing insights into his tactics for success. Williams will be joined in Exhibit Hall 1 by Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab at 2pm. Later on in the afternoon, author Clara Shih, whose book The Facebook Era was one of our Weekend Reading suggestions, will be signing copies of her book at the South by Bookstore. The signing starts at 3:20, so get their early and on time because 10 minutes later there is a trio of interesting panels to choose from.

At 3:30 in the Radisson Travis, Jason Oberfest of ngmoco and Eroc Eldon of Inside Network will be presenting on how online games can take advantage of social media. We’ve seen a lot of interesting developments in web-based gaming lately, especially with the success of Zynga on Facebook. New technologies are making in-browser games much more powerful than anything we’ve seen before, and the opportunities to tie social networking into the experience make the possibilities for startups in this genre very promising.

If gaming isn’t your cup of tea, head on over to the Courtyard Rio Grande A to see Elizabeth Hallmark and Drew Scherz of Texas Comptroller speak on “Building Happy and High Performing Teams.” This is similar to a topic discussed by David Russo in his book 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent, which we also profiled in our Weekend Reading series.

But stealing the 3:30 time-slot might be a discussion of the future of incubators with some startup super-stars. Naval Ravikant of Venture Hacks, David Cohen of TechStars and Paul Graham of Y Combinator will join a few others to discuss what they call the “Seed Combinator,” but really startups and entrepreneurs could glean value from anything these guys chose to talk about, so don’t miss it.

After those panels, pick up and walk over to the Hilton at 5pm for what should be a fascinating discussion about customer service in the world of today’s social networks. This five-member panel including Jeremiah Owyang, CNET‘s Caroline McCarthy, and executives from Microsoft, HP and Comcast should shed some light on how customer support has evolved “in a 140 character world.”

Tomorrow morning, as the Interactive portion closes out, entrepreneurs may want to stop by Ballroom A at 9:30 for a discussion on protyping web applications. Are wire-frames and mock-ups going the way of the Dodo? Darren Delave and Michael Leggett of Google think so, and will present on ways “make and present prototypes to improve all stages of the design and development cycle.”

But the real issue every startup and entrepreneur wants to know about is how to get money from investors. At 3:30 tomorrow in Hilton A/B, don’t miss legendary investor Reid Hoffman and Justin Fishner-Wolfson of Founders Fund present on “Getting Your Company Funded.” The talk promises to debunk the myths and questions behind VC funding, term sheets, options, liquidation, “much much more.”

And finally, a good way to close out the festivities is to check out day 2 of the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator competition at the Hilton. You can stop by and check out the companies which present throughout the day, but come back at 6pm to see which of the 12 finalists will be crowned this year’s winners. And if you aren’t in Austin, you can still watch for free online at the Accellerator homepage (granted you have Silverlight installed, of course).

Also, remember that everyone at SXSW is tweeting like crazy at all of these events and discussions, so use Twitter search to find out more information if you can’t make it to each event. Each event’s description on the SXSW homepage also includes the official hashtag for the event so you can easily see what people are saying about it on Twitter. If you have any other suggestions for startups and entrepreneurs at SXSW, let us know in the comments.

Photos by Flickr users toprankonlinemarketing, and magerleague.

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Everyone has been talking about how this year’s SXSW will be the “year of location” as Foursquare and Austin-based Gowalla go head-to-head in a location-based battle royale. Location, however, is not the only emerging technology that will be on display in Austin; American auto maker Chevrolet announced it will be debuting new augmented reality promotions at SXSW this year.

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Festival attendees can download the Chevy iReveal application on the iPhone which will allow them to participate in a scavenger hunt-like game that blends augmented reality with location-based functions. A map in the application shows the location of Chevy vehicle promotions around Austin where users can “unlock” the ability to view 360-degree 3D models of the cars in an AR view using the phone’s camera.

Using AR to promote vehicles with 3D models is nothing new, but this is one of the first versions to reach consumers on their phones. The automotive industry has been one of the leading areas pushing desktop webcam-based AR experiences that have allowed users to interact with 3D models of cars from their homes. This new promotion from Chevy is unique in that it allows customers to have the same experience on their iPhones.

According to the App Store, AR iPhone application developer acrossair has produced the application for Chevrolet. The interesting thing about this experience is the way it blends the dichotomous features of mobile and webcam-based AR. The 3D model manipulation we are used to seeing on the desktop is wisely mixed with the location-based map info seen in most mobile AR applications. By taking the best of both worlds, acrossair and Chevrolet have opened the door to a new breed of mobile AR advertisements.

Augmented reality isn’t the only emerging technology Chevrolet is experimenting with at SXSW; quick response (QR) codes, which are like a technological cousin of AR, are a large part of the company’s promotions as well. When investigating Chevrolet’s latest cars, users can photograph QR codes placed strategically on the cars to learn more about specific parts of the car. A QR code placed on the hood, for example, will launch information about the car’s engine. Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications and Technology for General Motors, is excited about the future of QR codes and AR for the automotive industry.

“Imagine using Quick Response Codes to download the price and options for a vehicle on a dealer lot right to your cell phone. Or, imagine using augmented reality to virtually preview different colors of the Camaro in your own driveway,” Barger says. “We are just scratching the surface of what’s possible with mobile technologies and social media applications.”

Chevrolet is also teaming up with Gowalla to provide location-based advertisements to people checking in at SXSW. One promotion they are offering is a shuttle ride from the airport in one of their new cars to select users that check in at the airport, so don’t forget to fire up Gowalla when you land in Austin. For more information about mobile and desktop AR advertising, be sure to check out our report on the subject coming soon!

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As we profiled in our Never Mind the Valley series last month, New York is increasing its stronghold on the east coast startup scene. The city’s rich media and international business ecosystems make it the perfect launch pad for startups looking to leverage these markets. One other reason the city has seen successful growth of entrepreneurship is the holding company Betaworks, which shows no signs of slowing after raising $20 million from Intel, AOL, RRE Ventures and several others.

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It is a little harder to place a label on Betaworks compared to other similar entities that some would call incubators. The important thing to know is that Betaworks considers itself a holding company and will not only invest in companies but will hold and operate some of them as well. Having previously raised $8 million in 2008, the company has put their money to good use; Betaworks’ history includes helping start companies like Bit.ly and Chartbeat, while investing in other real-time Web apps like Tweetdeck, and helping in the sale of others like Summize, which was acquired by Twitter in 2008.

Needless to say, the company seems to know which horses to bet on, which is likely the reason why several corporations and investors teamed up to refresh their capital. Along with Intel, AOL and RRE, investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Softbank and The New York Times Company all contributed to help Betaworks keep moving forward.

The real-time Web is a trend we’ve been following very closely at ReadWriteWeb as evidenced by last fall’s Real-Time Web Summit. For startups in this space, especially those on the east coast, Betaworks is a great resource and potential investor. The new funds will not only go toward helping bolster their already impressive list of companies, but also to bringing fresh new companies on board. As with the recent $750 million raised by Battery Ventures, the large collaborative investment in Betaworks is another solid indicator of returning venture capital dollars after a lackluster 2009.

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Lately at ReadWriteStart we have talked with a few people working with startups in the co-creation and mass customization industry. Some of these startups use on-demand production techniques to minimize overhead costs and create early cash flow for their businesses. Of course, this business technique is nothing new; larger companies have put this to practice for years, like Dell which custom fits computers to customer specifications.

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More recently, however, startups have begun to jump on the mass customization bandwagon. Cafe Press and Spreadshirt allow customers to custom design t-shirts, and others allow users to make bags, jewelry, perfume, games and even food to order. While these kinds of startups have become more popular in recent years, they have been more successful in nations with smaller markets, such as Germany, and have not taken off in larger markets like America.

For those looking to begin a startup and who want to learn more about mass customization, we’ve compiled a quick list of a few books to get a crash course on the basics. Bear in mind the following list is in no particular order and is not a ranking, but merely a run-down of some of the more popular books on mass customization and co-creation. If you have any further suggested reading that people interested in this topic might find useful, by all means please let us know in the comments.

Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition, by B. Joseph Pine II

Mass Customization: An Enterprise-Wide Business Strategy, by David J. Gardner

SPARK: Be More Innovative Through Co-Creation, by John Winsor

The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks, by C. K. Prahalad

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Longtime technology innovation investment firm Battery Ventures increased its capital to over $4 billion Thursday as the firm announced the securing of its ninth fund at a value of $750 million. Startups and entrepreneurs may be able to look at 2010 with high hopes as Battery’s fund, one of the largest seen in the last year, comes after a period of decline in venture funding.

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Battery Ventures, which operates out of Boston, Silicon Valley, and Israel, has been investing in tech innovation since 1983. The firm has helped several Internet companies launch initial public offerings (IPOs), such as the early search engine Infoseek, the web app platform Akamai, and analytics provider Omniture. In a press release Thursday, Battery partner Tom Crotty expressed his hope that Battery’s new fund signals a rebound of floundering investment dollars.

“After a slow investment pace industry-wide in 2009, we look forward to rounding out the portfolio of Fund VIII and initiating the investment cycle for our new fund,” said Crotty. “With improving market fundamentals, we believe the next few years will be healthy ones to put money to work.”

This fresh influx of capital for Battery, which equals the amount raised in their previous fund, should excite early stage startups who have been struggling to raise funding in the down market. Battery, which invests in all stages of companies, could be an excellent benchmark for what is to come in 2010. This new fund, along with other early signals this year, could be a precursor to a steady increase of VC funding.

Google may be helping this as well, as the Internet behemoth is giving the M&A market a boost by snatching up companies left and right in 2010. So far this year, Google has acquired Aardvark, reMail, Picnik and DocVerse, all within the first 64 days of the year. In 2009, a year with poor M&A performance, Google only acquired 6 companies; at this year’s pace they could buy as many as 20, though they have been known to go on quick brief shopping sprees. In the early summer of 2007, they roped in 11 companies in less than three months, but only totaled 16 that year.

As the first quarter of 2010 draws to a close in a few weeks, it will be interesting to see numbers on how the M&A and venture capital markets are fairing. If Battery Ventures’ fresh cash and Google’s acquisitions are any barometer, things should be looking up for the rest of the year.

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Last week we talked about managing split teams with Danny Wong of Blank Label, a site for creating custom men’s dress shirts and a startup in the growing field of co-creation. These types of startups, which have gained more traction overseas than in the U.S., run on a model of on-demand production, which allows them to become cash-flow positive in a relatively short period of time. Wednesday I had the chance to talk about co-creation with Carmen Magar, a German woman living in New York who works for chocri, a German startup that sells customizable chocolates.

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According to Magar, Germany is quickly becoming a hub for co-creation startups while the U.S. and the U.K. have been much slower to adopt them. Before setting up shop in the U.S., custom t-shirt company Spreadshirt actually began as a startup in Germany. Magar, who has spent significant amounts of time in both countries, says that while the difference in cultures has been an influence, the main reason that co-creation has taken off in Germany is the country’s smaller market which allows startups to make a larger impact.

“What happened in Germany is that there were a lot of startups doing co-creation; a lot of companies that didn’t have a production process in place that were really flexible and could talk to their customers directly,” Magar told ReadWriteWeb on Wednesday. “In the U.S., the way it was proselytized was that soon in the future every big company would change their production process to enable mass customization, but that’s actually a really risky thing to do. What I think will happen is that the startups, the small companies that are nimble, will lead the way to bring that control to the consumer.”

Another reason why co-creation and mass customization may have taken root in Germany is that the country, like many in Europe, suffers from a severe lack of seed level funding, while the U.S. has incubators and VC firms across the country targeting early stage companies. As we mentioned last week with Blank Label, most co-creation startups use a business model that lets them produce products only as they are ordered, keeping costs down and allowing the company to have an early cash flow.

In a region like Europe, the need to bootstrap businesses from the ground up like chocri (which started with €25,000) is much higher, and co-creation is a great way to accomplish this. American startups may be less likely to go down the route of co-creation because the investors are more willing to take risks on less proven businesses.

Magar, who lived in Germany most of her life and came to America to get her MBA, believes that Germany’s propensity towards mass customization is also part of what led chocri to hire her as their representative in America. The company just happened to be looking to expand their presence to the U.S. when Magar called to express her interest in the company.

“I think why they chose to have a German on the team is because I saw a lot more of this happen, and I understand more about mass customization,” says Magar. “Because I live here I’ve experienced the American market, but it was more important to them to bring in an understanding of the concept.”

This is an important concept for startups to grasp, both in the U.S. and abroad. When looking to expand overseas, it is important to find someone with familiarity in both regions who can survey the new market and who can grasp the core values of your business. As a German, Magar completely understood chocri’s co-creation strategy, and studying in America made her a great choice to help the company find a presence there.

Is co-creation finally beginning to catch on in the U.S. with companies like Spreadshirt and Blank Label? Or perhaps co-creation is more alive in America than we realize? Or is mass customization a startup model that will continue its struggle to gain traction in America? Let us know what you think about co-creation and spreading startups overseas in the comments below!

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We’ve all heard of the big company that started as two guys in their garage, but these days, with startup organizations and incubators, more and more success stories seem to feature companies that built their success from group collaboration. One excellent example of how startups can take advantage of collaboration is to work in a coworking environment with other companies and entrepreneurs.

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Tuesday I had the opportunity to chat with Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay, an online gifting service that has spent a large portion of its short history coworking with outside developers and entrepreneurs. Starting in October of last year, the company spent six weeks working in the offices of San Francisco-based Ruby on Rails development house Pivotal Labs. In December they moved into a space at the Ventura Ventures Technology Center where they work alongside other consumer Internet startups, sharing ideas and resources.

“The thing about a startup is that you’re always under resourced; you never have enough people,” Lin told ReadWriteWeb Tuesday. “So the more you can make out of less, the better off your are, the faster you can go, and a startup is all about speed.”

Lin, formerly the Vice President of ABC.com and General Manager of Evite, was brought on board at Lottay after the company received Series A funding in the summer of 2009. Below are some highlights from my discussion with Lin on the benefits of coworking environments for startups.

How did Lottay benefit from the Pivotal Labs experience?
We camped out at the Pivotal Labs office for the entire six weeks. We were in San Francisco and sitting in their office everyday with the two developers that were on our contract. The reason this worked better is that it was very intense and very concentrated; you had no other distractions. The other reason it was fantastic is that its a room full of 25 top notch Ruby on Rails developers. We were only paying for two of them in our engagement, but there were the other 23 sitting in that room working on various things.

We would come up with a problem or a hurdle we couldn’t get over and we would just shout out, “Hey has anyone ever done this with a library?” and some guy would jump up and say, “Yeah, I’ve done that!” Voila! Problem solved. And that would happen all the time. So we were getting the benefit of this very open, huge brain trust that Pivotal had even though, technically speaking, we were just paying for the two guys. The third other thing I’d say was great about the environment is that they had other clients in there. So we got to meet, talk to, and get to know some other Internet companies, and that was really cool.”

What is the experience like now in Ventura?
There are 12 of us in this incubator here in the city of Ventura; it’s a very deliberate ecosystem the city is trying to push, and we’re part of that ecosystem. We all speak the same language, the same jargon, the same shorthand. If one of us comes up with a brilliant idea or an interesting strategic question, we’ll grab each other, white board it, sit in a room, chat in the hall way – the kind of random things that happen when you’re all physically located in the same place. The other thing that we benefit from is that because this is run by the city, we get a lot of support in the form of a fantastic rate on rent, free wifi, marketing and public relations, and they’ve helped us find recruits when we have openings to hire people. The city is more than just a landlord, they’re trying to jump-start this ecosystem.

So you would suggest that early stage startups try to find coworking space?
If possible, I would not do the “in your basement” or “in your garage by yourself”. Those are the legendary stories we like to hear about, but I think the majority of successful startups has had some kind of coworking environment. I worked for nine years in the Bay area and I know that while there are official incubators, there are also these offices where nine out of the ten companies there are high-tech companies. Being with other people who are doing the same thing is hugely beneficial.

In the consumer Internet space, especially with how the Web has evolved over the last decade, everything is getting more social and more open, both in terms of the consumer behavior and in terms of the development and how things are produced. So it just stands to reason that in launching and trying to grow these types of businesses, you should be more social as well.

Is there anything startups should avoid when in a coworking environment?
It is tempting to do a lot of partnerships with other startups because you’re there, you know each other, you understand each other’s pains and trials and tribulations. Resist the temptation unless is makes a lot of sense. Usually what a startup needs by way of partnership is a large established company.

What is your advice to the young startups out there looking to launch or grow their business?
There will be 100 problems to solve every week. I can guarantee you that at least 75 of those problems have already been experienced and solved by someone else. That’s the problem with being in a garage or a bedroom by yourself; you’ll probably end up trying to solve those 75 problems yourself. When you’re colocated and coworking with other entrepreneurs, you can share. “Oh, you’ve got that problem? I’ve got that problem, and here’s the solution.” You can benefit from their learnings and not have to reinvent the wheel, which saves you a lot of time.

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Tuesday night Google announced the creation of the Google Apps Marketplace, a place for third-party applications developers to share their work with the community of Google Apps users. Currently, businesses can use enterprise versions of Google’s popular suite of web apps, and with the new Apps Marketplace, they can integrate outside applications into these services. One of the applications launching in the App Marketplace is Expensify, an online tool for gathering and reporting expenses.

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Expensify, whose motto is “Expense reports that don’t suck,” prides itself on its ability to create detailed and IRS certified expense reports without the need for a single scrap of paper. Users can associate a credit card with their account for automatic tracking of purchases, and Expensify will create electronic versions of the receipt, eliminating the need for paper receipt hoarding.

For expenses like hotel and travel reservations that require special treatment, users can email the confirmation to Expensify and the app will generate the data and include a PDF of the email in the report. If you use the wrong card or pay with cash, mobile applications for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm devices allow users to snap a picture of the receipt and send it to Expensify.

When sending reports, Expensify makes full color PDFs with tables, charts and graphs of the data. Recipients can accept, modify or reject the expense reports and can even reimburse the expenses from directly within Expensify by printing a check or sending a payment via direct deposit. Or, if need be, the reports can be send to third-party bookkeepers for review. Expensify’s CEO David Barrett hopes, however, that small businesses and startups taking advantage of Expensify will be able to cut bookkeepers out of their work flow entirely.

“Expense reports affect everyone of all business sizes, from sole proprietorships to million dollar businesses…Everyone has this problem and everyone hates the current solution,” Barrett told ReadWriteWeb Tuesday. “One thing that makes Expensify unique from other applications is it’s not built for accountants; it’s built for the people actually doing it.”

With the new Google Apps Marketplace, companies looking to implement the app into their business can simply add it as an extension of Google Apps. This means that employees won’t have to create new Expensify accounts; the application does that automatically in the background when added to Google Apps through the Apps Marketplace. From anywhere within Google Apps, users can click the “More” tab at the top of the screen, select “Expenses” and they are directed to Expensify’s site with the help of OpenID.

“We are very excited to have Expensify in the Google Apps Marketplace,” said Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise in a press release Tuesday. “Through the Google Apps Marketplace, software vendors like Expensify are helping us build a rich ecosystem of integrated apps that work seamlessly with Google Apps.”

One of the large benefits of the app is that it is relatively inexpensive. It is free for users to send reports, but costs $5 per month, per submitter for managers with the first two submitters free. Integration with FreshBooks and QuickBooks makes Expensify a solid choice to track and report expenses for small businesses and startups.

Additionally, Expensify is a great example of how third-party developers can now use Google’s new marketplace to build, integrate and market their products. Startups can use and develop on Google apps like Gmail, Calendar and Docs instead of creating their own. This makes it much easier to quickly launch products and features, but running a business built on the shoulders of Google may not necessarily be a long-term solution. The marketplace does, however, provide great exposure potential for apps.

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Early stage startups in Europe will be the primary beneficiaries of a new €6 million seed fund just announced by Berlin-based Team Europe Ventures. In the past we’ve talked about Europe’s entrepreneurial woes, most notably a dearth of seed funding due to having a culture largely averse to taking risks financially. This new fund is a good step towards changing that trend and keeping more startups from looking for funding elsewhere.

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The €6 million fund (over $8 million) will provide up to €500,000 to early stage startups in the Internet and mobile Internet spaces over the next three years. Team Europe plans to selectively choose four to five startups each year to receive the funding, rather than quickly spreading the wealth around to any worthy recipient.

“If we feel that a business will succeed without us, but will be quicker, larger, nicer with us – than it’s a case for us,” said Team Europe partner Kolja Hebenstreit in a press release Tuesday. “Experience shows that decisive decisions are often made during the foundation phase, so we think it’s good to speak with experienced potential partners as early as possible.”

Team Europe has also rounded up entrepreneurs from past investments and active angel investors to assist in the disbursement of the funds, including Matthias Spieß of Leipzig-based Spreadshirt, and angel Günther Faltin.

“These are all people who are active in the Internet space and with whom we have successfully worked together in the past,” said partner Lukasz Gadowski, explaining the “tightly-knit network of experts” that will help Team Europe pick early stage companies to fund.

Hopefully this fund will start a trend among European venture capital firms. As we mentioned in February, many European startups have been looking to American incubators to help them get off the ground. If funds like these succeed, we could see these numbers go down over time, and more successful startups could emerge from Europe. Most VCs in Europe look for proven models and a solid financial foundations, so seed funds like Team Europe’s and organizations like Seedcamp can help startups get a boost into the line of sight of VCs providing second, third and fourth round funding.

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Online retailer Amazon has ended all Colorado-based affiliate accounts after a new law passed by the state’s legislature would have forced them to collect and pay state sales taxes. The law, HB 10-1193, states that any affiliate marketer making more than $10,000 for a retailer is declared a legal agent, and a state presence, of that company. Rather than be forced to pay the state taxes, Amazon has instead side-stepped the law by closing its doors to all affiliates based in Colorado.

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Residents of the state can still buy from Amazon and can even be referred by affiliates in other states, but the company’s affiliates in Colorado are out of luck. In a letter to its affiliates announcing the termination of their accounts on Monday, Amazon decried the new Colorado state law and encouraged affiliates to “express their views” to the General Assembly and to Governor Bill Ritter.

“There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way,” Amazon wrote in a letter to it’s affiliates. “As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.”

A court decision in 1992 ruled that online retailers only have to pay state sales taxes to those in which they have a physical presence in, such as with offices or warehouses. Colorado’s new law says that affiliates represent a presence in the state, but in reality they are just marketing partners, not part of the company as the law suggests.

Backlash yesterday was largely targeted at the Colorado legislature, and not at Amazon for ending the program. It makes more sense for Amazon to end their affiliate program in Colorado than to be forced to file state taxes, especially since they can still make money from customers in the state. By attempting to collect on taxes from online retailers, Colorado has effectively shot themselves in the foot; Amazon affiliates can no longer make any income which means less income tax for the state to collect. There are other companies through which to run an affiliate account, but why would they want to pay taxes either?

“I should have come out very publicly about this when I first heard about it,” writes investor Brad Feld, himself one of Amazon’s discontinued Colorado affiliates. “I expect the Internet Affiliate business in Colorado will completely die within the next thirty days (every company that has an affiliate business will turn off all of their Colorado-based affiliates.)”

The Colorado legislature should have foreseen this outcome – it’s not the first time Amazon has been forced to shut down affiliate programs. In July of 2009, Amazon closed off their programs in Rhode Island and North Carolina, and has previously sued over a law passed in New York in 2008. The suit, however, was eventually thrown out and Amazon has since been paying taxes for New York affiliates they feel are too valuable to give up.

The decision in Colorado should make entrepreneurs and small business owners participating in similar affiliate programs in any state nervous, especially those in states with large deficits and small consumer markets. California’s budget woes and it’s large consumer economy could make a bad combination for Amazon who might be unwilling to give up their valuable affiliate program there if a similar law is enacted. The problem for affiliates in smaller states is that Amazon won’t think twice about shutting down their program there, as evidenced by Rhode Island and North Carolina.

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We’ve talked about design a lot recently, highlighting the nuances of thoughtful placement and treatment of various elements of a web page. Today I stumbled onto an interesting blog post by Ryan Spoon of Polaris Venture Partners about how small changes or additions, specifically in design, can at times make a huge difference for a product on the Web. In the example Spoon references, Facebook added a post log-out message to their homepage which for some users will suggest they look into using Facebook mobile – a small change that is proving useful for the social media powerhouse.

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Now when users log out of Facebook and are redirected to the homepage, an updated graphic directs their attention to the service’s mobile offerings. One message says “Leaving? Try Facebook on Your Mobile,” and another reads “Headed out? Stay connected: Visit facebook.com on your mobile phone.” It’s a subtle and easily implemented change from the default image, but in terms of visibility for their mobile efforts, its huge.

Previously the main promotion for Facebook’s mobile services came in the form of a small icon and text below the “Connect With Friends” section in the lower right portion of the site. The new promotion is wrangling up users who may or may not have known about the mobile capabilities of Facebook at the exact moment they might need to use the service: when they logout and leave their computer.

Some new data from the blog All Facebook suggests that the site’s new promotion has had a significant impact on use of its iPhone application. During the month of February, daily active users of the app hovered between 13 million and 14 million, but last week this figure leaped 20% to over 16.5 million. It is unclear, however, if a similar uptake in text alerts was seen from the promotion, but it may be fair to assume that it did. This represents a significant boost for Facebook’s mobile options, but it still falls far short of the site’s most used application, FarmVille, which has roughly 30 million daily active users.

Whether or not a 2 million user spike in mobile usage is considered a marketing success for such a large community as Facebook, this still serves as a great example for startups of how small tweaks can make a large difference in the usage of your services. One thing of interest about this data is that it says to me that Facebook mobile, which I would consider a main feature, had gone relatively unnoticed by the majority of Facebook users. Or they just needed a reminder that it existed.

This is a reminder that for the most popular web services, the majority of the users are not like its creators; they are not web savvy geeks. We learned this a few weeks ago with the whole “Facebook login” debacle when wayward Facebook users were directed to an article we had written about Facebook Connect after trying to use Google search to login. What this means is that no matter how obvious you think something is, there will always be a portion of your audience that may be oblivious to it.

In most cases, its better to not constantly bombard users with promotions of secondary services; it can be annoying and it clutters up design. This creates a dilemma for promoting services without taking up precious real-estate for main features, one which Facebook solved with their post log-out promotion. But aside from promoting services, small changes to colors, sizes, and styles for things like call-to-action buttons can make a big difference.

Personally, I was surprised that so many people actually log out of Facebook manually. I always stay logged in on my home computers – I even had to look around to see where the “log out” button was. But once again, the lesson learned here is that not all Facebook users are like me. It also could say that healthy reminders that aren’t overdone can be helpful in promoting services. Don’t be afraid to make a small change and see how it affects your numbers, you could end up learning something useful about your users from it.

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