The Next Web

Reddit open source, we owe it to Wired

Written on June 21, 2008 – 3:31 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

After one day of flying and one day of recovering from a hectic week in San Francisco, I’m once again ready for some serious blogging. Let’s start with some old news that might still interest you. Last Wednesday, Patrick, Arjen, and I crashed a Reddit party. We weren’t on the list, but thought we could “add some value” anyway. As you might have read, Reddit has just became an open source project, so we decided to ask co-founder Steve Huffman some questions about this brave business decision - which turned out we totally own to Wired’s publisher Condé Nast Publications.

Undersigned, Steve Huffman, Patrick, and Arjen

Huffman: “Quite a large number of Reddit users are programmers, so we decided to leverage that by opening up the platform”. Right after Huffman and his team did that, they immediately saw the result they were hoping for: “TechCrunch has developed it’s own social news site - based on the Reddit source. That’s exactly the kind of stuff we were hoping for.” He suspects that open source is the future for Web 2.0, though he made a remark that makes me question that a bit: “I’m not sure whether we had opened up if Wired [Condé Nast Publications] hadn’t acquired us. We can take more risk nows”.

.. and organize better parties. We were amazed by the luxurious cocktail card and the fancy food Reddit served. It was fun seeing some good ol’ Web 2.0 people like iJustine, Pete Cashmore, Silicon Calley, and Scott Beale. See you next time in San Francisco!

I hope you like that post!

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open source, party, reddit, san francisco, steve huffman, Wired

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Mischievous Monday Morning: iGoogle Party & Mac OS X as Music Video

Written on May 19, 2008 – 9:06 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Somehow we missed the invitation for this iGoogle Artist Themes New York party. I’m sure we got one. Anyway, for a great example on what you can do to dress up a party if you have unlimited funds check out their video. In their own words: “What if the Google homepage had been designed by Dolce & Gabbana? Or Philippe Starck? Or the Beastie Boys? Get a behind the scenes look at our iGoogle Artist Themes launch event held in New York City’s Meatpacking District.”

Do you have those days where you can’t seem to get any work done? You just play around with Photoshop a bit? Mindlessly opening and closing windows? Well, watch this video to see how one person turned a lot of window opening and other Mac OS X Finder related actions into one hell of a Video Clip for the song Again & Again by The Bird And The Bee.

Here is an interview with Dennis Liu, the director.

fun, igoogle, mmm, new york, party, Video Interview

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Entrepreneurs ARE the NEW Rock stars

Written on December 7, 2007 – 8:49 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Dutch Social Network Hyves celebrated its 5th million member tonight. We were there and found out that the new rock stars are Entrepreneurs.

Even the DJs play second fiddle to these guys. Check out the video, where you can see the exact moment where they reach their 5 millionth user:

And some photos:

entrepreneurs, hyves, party, social networks

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Social Network Party: 30.000 beers please!

Written on December 6, 2007 – 4:49 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Sure, discussions about the Web 2.0 bubble are here to stay. Sometimes however, a social network proves the critics wrong. For example, the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, Hyves, is welcoming its fifth million user today. Four million users are Dutch, which is a huge number considering the fact that the Netherlands have 16 million citizens.

To celebrate the occasion, Hyves is throwing a party in Amsterdam. The location offers space for 800 ‘Hyvers’ to party with the crew.

And this is where the really amazing fact comes in: over 30.000 members subscribed for a place on the guest list! Some active network that is. If so many members want to party with each other in ‘real life’, Hyves must have some value.

Next Web bloggers Patrick and Boris will attend the party and promised me to bring back some pictures to show you how we party in Amsterdam. [here they are!]

hyves, party, social networks, web 2.0

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