That’s a drop of one third– huge: VC Funding On Pace For First Sub-$20B Year Since 1998 – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ http://bit.ly/3HXntG

Social media has a problem scaling because as soon as it starts to hit its stride, the incentives draw spammers. Geeking with Greg: An arms race in spamming social software ”

The same sort of thing is happening on Yahoo Answers…” http://bit.ly/4C7I5L

RT @venturehype: How a successful incubation program is run and determine whether starting one is right for you: http://bit.ly/1sYNAa

Incubator 2.0: A Silicon Valley Success Story (and a plug for StartupVisa.com) “Now that the 2009 fbFund REV social incubator program has wrapped up, i thought i’d post some slides from a talk i’ve been doing recently. ” http://bit.ly/2WUpll

One of the big losers of the AOL Time Warner debacle: Turner Lost CNN, Fonda, Fortune, Feels ‘Like a Dummy’ (Update1) – Bloomberg.com “Turner lost $7 billion when Time Warner’s stock collapsed in the wake of the 2001 merger with AOL, the Internet business it is now shedding. ” http://bit.ly/2vshBb

Häagen-Dazs Five ice cream is a smart marketing campaign – The Curious Capitalist – TIME.com http://bit.ly/2lw7gM

I think this is an old business truth that still holds today. It’s why firms should want to get big fast. So next time you see an M&A deal that doesn’t make sense, it may have been driven by the fear of dying in the middle. http://bit.ly/47KwzU

Interesting– since Apple doesn’t dominate the desktop OS platform, they are less reliant on the network effects associated with it (3rd party apps): “if you can get by with just software designed by Apple and if money is not a big issue, you will be happy with a Mac.” http://bit.ly/GysDM

Fred Wilson, winning the hearts of more entrepreneurs: “The VC business is not about grabbing the largest slice of the pie. It is about getting involved with very big pies. VCs can do what they want and they are doing it. But please don’t use the words ‘we need to own’ around me. I am calling bullshit on it and will do it to your face.” http://bit.ly/1bbbw0

peHUB » Not So Fast On The New NASDAQ Exchange “The new exchange wouldn’t ease the IPO drought because it doesn’t go far enough, says Pascal Levensohn of Levensohn Venture Partners… The minimum size of capital raised by companies on the new exchange would need to be between $50 million and $100 million.” http://bit.ly/25bxVV