Silicon Valley Tag

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Member of Too Many Social Networks… Apparently, the leading social networks have given up on innovation. Now they just gaze covetously at each other’s “best practices.”Read More

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango LLC & Social Media Consultant For decades, professional procrastinators relied on communal hydration technologies (i.e. water coolers) to support their best practices. Unfortunately, that particular tool maxed out bladder capacities, and even the dullest middle managers quickly learned that employees chatting while holding little paper cups weren’t exactly doing “work.” Fortunately, Silicon Valley came to the rescue…Read More

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango LLC & Dotcom-Bust Survivor “If you buy a share of Facebook and flip your shares in a few years, you could make millions. Oh, but wait: You can’t. Facebook isn’t a public company. The only people who can invest in it already are millionaires. The hot IPO market of the 1990s, which allowed Regular Joes to buy stock in new companies, has been replaced by a rich insider’s club that trades in pre-IPO equity sales. The middle-class folks who daytraded their wayRead More

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC Over my fifteen years of working in website development, I’ve encountered some bizarre and fascinating characters rivaled only by the people who gravitate to show business. Here are just a few I’ve met — perhaps you recognize some of them?…Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder Of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Values Public Utilities But Wouldn’t Want To Work For One; photo by Gretar Ívarsson via Wikimedia Commons… The late Senator Ted Stevens once claimed that the Internet was a “series of tubes.” Now, there were many reasons to ridicule venal Ted, but his analogy wasn’t that off the mark. Yes, it was technically wrong, but many Web 2.0 companies share the same purpose as public utilities: they exist to pipe stuff to users.Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Survivor of Multiple Dotcoms; Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash… So I’m walking through my neighborhood counting the foreclosure signs when I develop this mighty thirst. Fortunately, I find a lemonade stand run by an enterprising six-year-old named Zucky. Just as I’m about to pay $4 for a cup (obviously, Zucky graduated from the Starbucks Preschool of Management), I see another lemonade stand across the street run by another enterprising six-year-old. This one, however, has a sign saying “Free Lemonade.”Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Writer Who Also Likes Numbers… Just thought I’d dash off a quick note to put a few recent media-business items in perspective. The first one you’ve heard about extensively; you might find these others somewhat amusing… Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo!: $44.6 billion Oil company Exxon’s profit for just the 4th quarter of 2007: $11.7 billion State of California’s budget deficit: $14.6 billion Purchase price of HotOrNot, the online dating & rating service, as reported by TechCrunch: $20 million HotOrNot’s annual revenue:Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Remembers Search Engines Before Google; this article contains affiliate links, and purchasing through them supports the Atomic Tango martini fund… “I’m so full of action, my name should be a verb.” – Big Daddy Kane Too many dotcom execs and entrepreneurs claim marketing isn’t necessary. “Just look at Google,” they say with smug grins. True, Google never spent a dollar on advertising their world-dominating search engine, but they did perpetrate some wicked marketing…Read More