I usually avoid repeating infographics, but thought this one was a great illustration of Google+ and Google’s strategy for owning the world (at the expense of everyone else). Up until Google+ and the company force feeding it into everything, I had been a huge Google fan. I’m really not sure anymore. What happened to “don’t be evil”?

alt="Infographic: Testing Social Signals" />
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TastyPlacement, a web design and SEO company, To view the original post, see the original

Social Media Infographic.

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Google by Benjamin Kuo

Well, it’s not just those of us in Southern California facing a tech accelerator “epidemic” — love the headline on this article over at the folks covering New York for Betabeat: The Tech Accelerator Epidemic Has Hit New Jersey

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Accelerators by Benjamin Kuo

Anyone thinking of going to the UCLA Entrepreneur Association Conference on May 11th? The organizers there have extended a 15 percent discount to readers of socalTECH. Use promo code SOCALTECH. More details on the conference below:

Entrepreneur Association Conference – May 11, 2012

The Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Entrepreneur Association present the 2012 Entrepreneur Conference, where MBA students, alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors and key industry innovators assemble to share valuable insight on current topics in entrepreneurship, critical business skills and emerging market trends. 15 percent discount for SOCALTECH readers. Use promo code: SOCALTECH.

btw, to any event organizers out there — if you have a local conference and want to provide our readers with a discount, include them in your event submission, or email us.

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Conferences by Benjamin Kuo

If you’ve been in the local startup community for any time, particularly on the Westside LA or Santa Monica area, you might have run into Startups Uncensored, the series of events organized by Jason Nazar to help out other entrepreneurs figure out how to make their companies successful. However, you might also have found that it’s pretty hard to get in — the events are packed — or, if you’re like me, you haven’t been able to get to them as often as you like. In a convenient (but not unsurprising) move, Docstoc, Jason’s company, has been filming and posting the events–in full–on YouTube. They just posted Startups Uncensore #25: Strategies for Startup Sucess, and we’ve embedded it below:

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Conferences, Startups by Benjamin Kuo

(Elon Musk, center, with NASA astronauts - from SpaceX).

Here’s an interesting one for Friday: Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal, and has taken that fortune (literally) to new heights with Tesla Motors and SpaceX, actually  spends as much time in Southern California than he does in Silicon Valley (according to Mashable).  It’s actually very interesting, if you talk with folks in Southern California, they’re familiar with both SpaceX and Tesla, but when I talk to folks from Silicon Valley, they’re mostly aware of Tesla only (despite SpaceX’s huge success in getting their commercial rockets into space and soon heading to the ISS…)

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Billionares by Benjamin Kuo

Okay, we are crying uncle. We have added back the “Google+” button on our news posts. Anyone who wants to go back and +1 all the articles on their favorite companies, please do. (Apparently, Google’s ranking algorithms are now heavily weighting search relevancy towards pages which have been +1′d and shared — and is ignoring Facebook and Twitter mentions and PageRank). We had added them, but not enough So-Cal folks had been signed up back when we did, so we removed them awhile back. They’re back now, so use them liberally!!!!

Filed under:
Announcements, Google by Benjamin Kuo

I’m not sure if the folks over at Microsoft missed April Fool’s, were in a “let’s make a viral video” mood, or what, but they just announced a program to promote the use of Kinect for Xbox 360 in senior citizen’s centers around Los Angeles. In the best line ever, the video assets for the release include the best line ever (around 4:48 in): “You guys want to do Funky Town again?” (yes, those appear to be senior citizens dancing around in “bling” to Funky Town).

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Random by Benjamin Kuo

Okay, what we thought was our complete guide to accelerators and incubators is not quite so complete now, with two more to add: Frost Ventures (OC), and io/LA (Hollywood) in the last couple of weeks. We’ll be updating that list soon. Any other accelerators/incubators/coworking spaces we’re missing? We’re contemplating moving this into our live database of firms, since this area is changing so dynamically.

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Accelerators by Benjamin Kuo

One of the areas that is consistently identified here in Southern California as a way to further increase our technology base, is to increase the number of large, indigenous technology firms. Although we do have a healthy beginning there (in particular, in San Diego, with Qualcomm and the like and Orange County, with Broadcom, etc.), it’s an area that I know local leaders constantly wring their hands over. It’s interesting to note this morning that Europe has identified the same sort of issues there–a lack of large, indigenous tech companies in the region, something which would help spur more startups, create a local ecosystem, and also create jobs and employment. VC Nic Brisbourne, of DFJ Esprit, talks about Europe’s experience:

From a European perspective the important point here is that most acquisitions are made by US companies, and after that local job creation generally dwindles. Sometimes that is because the acquired business becomes core to the acquirer and new people are mostly hired in the US and other times it is because the acquisition goes badly and the acquired business withers.

That experience is one that folks in Southern California (and in particular, Los Angeles) have experienced first hand (think back to Geocities being acquired by Yahoo, Overture being acquired by Yahoo as well, etc.) Substitute “Silicon Valley companies” for instances of “US companies” in Nic’s quote above for an accurate description of the problem when successful companies/startups down here tend to be acquired by firms in Silicon Valley.

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Mergers and Acquisitions by Benjamin Kuo

In an interesting footnote to last week’s Los Angeles Venture Association awards, it’s noteworthy to see LAVA Hall of Fame winner Jon Funk (now running Ocean Road Partners, previously at Allegis Capital) has just booted up an effort to help educate entrepreneurs about receiving venture capital. Funk has just announced a plan to run a series of seminars to help startups get funding. The first–The Insider’s Guide: Fundraising For Your Startup in LA–is coming up next month, on April 5th.

Although there are plenty of seminars and events around getting funding, it’s somewhat unusual to have a successful venture capitalist share his knowledge of the process. Funk helped fund such companies as Rent.com, Shopzilla, and Sandpiper Networks. Although we’re biased (Jon has been a regular contributor and supporter of socalTECH), it’s interesting to see yet another resource here for startups looking to get funded and off the ground.

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Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo