Web 2 Ireland

Just saw over on Pat Phelan’s blog that MAXroam has saved their customers over a million dollars in roaming charges since they launched. That’s one hell of an achievement in nine months.

I still remember them blowing everyone away at TC40. They so should have won the grand prize there even if the billionaire Marc Andreessen didn’t understand why anyone would want to save money on roaming mobile charges

Now if only Pat could do something about roaming data, I’d be forced to marry him.

Taking a leaf out our good friend, Marc Canter’s style of blogging

Some bits from @ the globe

Social media on the up – lots of stats from the Universal McCann's report on third wave of global research into social media. It shows the majority of users are producing content and there is an ongoing shift towards participation – with lots of stats for folks.

Bubble 2.0 from Silicon Republic – with pearls of wisdom from the IVCA – The local venture capital (VC) community in Ireland is still cautious, though it has raised €750m to invest in the next wave of technology firms, having invested €1bn over the past decade. Most of our investments would be in software firms that can grow to scale, not in dot.com companies or because someone has a nice widget, says Regina Breheny, director general of the Irish Venture Capital Association. Funding in Irish companies is at its highest now since 2001, but much of these are follow-on investments in existing companies. There is still a lot of work to be done in raising money to seed new start-ups. Venture capitalists are currently raising money but it's debatable how much of these funds will go into new plays in the next five years.

Morgan Stanley report on Internet – with coverage on Techcrunch – contains a nice reference to Lenny at Polldaddy

D Conference – sponsored by the IDA – contains some great videos from this executive level conf in US

Health 2.0 startup Revahealth – is looking for staff – check careers page.

Robin Blandford has left the comforts of corporate world to do his own startup – no doubt it will be a big winner..

From Silicon Republic – 10 million bookings on Hostelworld

We wrote previously about Hostelworld/WRI – and with these kinds of figures no doubt we’ll see WRI IPO in the near future [and possibly at the 1 billion euro valuation.

The Being-Digital conference is on in London on June 10th. They are looking for 30 start-ups to present to a audience of 250 VC’s, entrepreneurs, Angel Investors, CEOs of the internet businesses and Internet media/press.

There will be 7 core discussion themes in the main auditorium – Search, Advertising, Identity, Social, Location, Retail and Content – and a dedicated ‘Demo room’ in which the 30 selected companies will demo their services and products to delegates throughout the day.

Demo Tickets are normally £895 but they are offering them for £500 which includes:

• 1 stand in the Demo room – this will be a dedicated to you all day
• 1 x full delegate ticket (for the main auditorium)
• 1 x demo room ticket (for a second person to attend)
• 1 x 1 minute pitch to audience of 200+ on the main stage following the speaker/panel session most relevant to your company (eg: social, search, advertising etc.)
• Your 1min pitch will be filmed and the video will be on their website, along with your details
• Evening networking reception
• There is also a competition running for best one minute demo pitch as voted for by delegates on the day – prize includes hardware, software and consultancy time

Whilst £500 may seem like a lot, it looks like reasonable value to me compared to lots of other conferences. It is also highly targetted rather than just being a general “web conf”. And with DEMO  costing $18000……

And I’ve just realised that PutPlace are already signed-up!

IGOPeople – which is led by Campbell Scott, the former Eircom director of consumer solutions – is ramping up for launch.

The online service will connect consumers and brands – through the use of social technology – helping brands communicate better with consumers – and facilitating consumers helping consumers.

The SBPost has some coverage on funding plans

From website
IGOpeople provides individuals, groups and organisations with a new way to find, connect, share, communicate and to conduct business. Whether you need to work with one person or with many, IGOpeople is the place for you to get things done.

We have a couple of invites left for the experimental Telco 2.0 roadtrip to Dublin, happening on Friday 30th May (yes, Friday-week).

Mail me at sos “at” dial2do “dot” com for an invite. Outline details are here.

The Big Word Project set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two University of Ulster students from Belfast, get some coverage in Wired.

They have all of the 291,500 Oxford English Dictionary entries in their inventory so plenty of opportunity to make some money with this venture.

The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.

For example, you may buy the word ‘Donkey’ for $6 and it will link to your site dedicated to donkeys. The word ‘Donkey’ will then be the gateway to your site and the definition will be changed. No longer will the word Donkey mean ‘a woodworking apparatus consisting of a clamping frame and saw, used for cutting marquetry veneers’, instead it will now be represented visually by ‘Chris’s Donkey Site’.

Those fab people at TechWeb Networks have come up trumps for us again and have given us two free tickets for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 9th to 12th.

Let’s keep this one simple. Either post your Enterprise 2.0 elevator pitch as a comment here or mail it to web2ireland DOT editor AT gmail DOT com. The pitch can be  anything from the germ of an idea to an existing revenue generating business. The two best ones get the tickets. The deadline is midnight BST on Friday 16th. We also have a discount code for anyone who still wants to attend but misses out on the free tickets. Feel free to mail us for that code from now on.

Given EI’s love of all things Enterprisey, you should definitely request market research assistance from your DA if you are thinking of going.

OK, I know this is a bit last minute but the lovely Liliana who provided us with all those free Web2Expo tickets just contacted me to tell me about Enterprise 2.0 in Boston in June.

They have something called the Launch Pad program which is designed to give start ups a platform to launch new products and services.

Interested companies are being asked to submit a one minute video pitch. These video pitches are posted to the Launch Pad forum where readers will choose who they want to see live at the event. After a few rounds of voting, the final four get to present in front of a live audience in Boston in June, where the winner will be chosen by the audience. The winner of the Launch Pad gets a free booth on the show floor of the 2009 Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

The catch? The deadline for submissions is today! So get pitching now. All that UStream, Qik and Seesmic practice can now be put to good use

Like Web2Expo, we’ll probably have some freebies and discounts for those who just wish to attend. My guess is that Enterprise Ireland may also lend a hand to those who are going.

Pat Phelan has just announced TwitterFone in the past hour and it’s gone completely insane! 1500 signups in 42 minutes. 72 comments on TechCrunch in the blink of an eye.

What is it? It’s a way of sending messages to the Twitter micro-blogging service by calling a number and speaking. Your message is converted to text and then posted to Twitter. For all those times when you can’t SMS (like when you are driving) or it’s just more convenient to speak.

Not only is it a great application with a stunning design by Sabrina Dent but there are some critical start-up lessons to be learned from the development. A small set of businesses came together to build this in a few weeks for a tiny cost. Cubic Telecom + Dial2Do + Zong + VOX!

Amazing job Pat and well done to all involved in the build and launch!