SEO Werkt!

When we planned our mini meet-up series, we expected a few geeks in a bar somewhere drinking and swapping stories about C#. Nothing prepared us for the onslaught. At one point, 1,256 of us filled all three floors of Bar 13, a techno club near Union Square, and for most of the night I was jostled, bumped, and generally mauled by the crowd. It was, in a word, amazing.

If you missed it, shame on you. If you were there and we talked, email me. I do, however, hope you enjoyed what amounted to TechCrunch’s triumphant return to the New York start-up scene.

We’d like to thank our excellent and kind volunteers and our sponsors: Yext, Traducto, WhatRunsWhere, Parlor, MyGenie, Return on Change (RoC), PeoplePerHour, and TouchTunes Interactive Networks. We had some great karaoke courtesy of our last sponsor and we had, quite literally, hundreds of pizzas thanks to MyPizza.com.

We’re planning some upcoming events in Philadelphia, Boston, and then another run down through Charlotte, Raleigh, and Atlanta with a pop-over to Savannah as well. If you’re in those cities, contact me at john@techcrunch.com.

It was great to see you guys last night. Thanks for coming out and thanks for making the meet-up a success. Hopefully we’ll see you at Disrupt in a few weeks.

Click to view slideshow.

Google’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders to save your search results.  This Easter egg is themed after the popular strategy game StarCraft, and may just be the geekiest Easter egg to date. In Starcraft a variety of races…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

As the third-generation iPad makes its way into the hands of eager customers worldwide, some buyers who pre-ordered the tablet through Apple’s online store are finding that their shipments have been delayed due to the onslaught of launch day deliveries.

After the onslaught of media that is CES, who wouldn’t want more CES? We definitely do, which is why we’re running the TC Gadgets Webcast live at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern straight out of our posh studio on the CES show floor. Our goal? To recap the day’s news, interview cool people, and give away amazing prizes.

Today we’re giving away a real, live Sony Vita to one lucky winner – details during the broadcast – but watch this space for some great content and be sure to watch our daily live streams from the show floor. We’ll be running these webcasts every day at 4pm Pacific, giving away great prizes in the process.

Do you have questions or concerns? Tweet us @techcrunch with the hashtag #CESCrunch. We’ll do our best to answer your questions on the fly. Something you particularly want to see at the show? We’ll aim our camera at it for you. Need a Nathan’s hot dog? Our Intern David will get it for you. That’s why they call TechCrunch Gadgets the most servile name in news.

Here is my latest post inspired by the onslaught of email messages I received from retailers over the holidays. Were you in the same boat? What did you think of the experience?

Check out How Not To Get More Business: 7 eMail Retail Experience Horrors! and let me know what you think… and what you would add to the list!

Thanks for reading.

Best,

C.B.

While I’m fairly certain that this is a publicity stunt tied into the upcoming CES season, BEHRINGER (their caps, not mine) has announced the iNuke, an 8×4 foot, 700 pound iPhone/iPad dock. It costs $30,000 and pumps out – no joke – 10,000 Watts.

This is part of their Eurosound brand, a higher-end range of 50 products that is cashing in on the newfound popularity of expensive but horrible headphones (see: Beats). To be fair, Behringer has always made good audio gear and mixers, so why can’t they dip a toe into the CE market? It’s a free planet, right?

Anyway, look for the iNuke at an aircraft hangar near you, because I doubt most houses will be able to withstand its onslaught of pure, unadulterated power.

After talking scale and product at Web 2.0 Summit, moderator John Heilemann started asking CEO Dennis Crowley about the competitive landscape, “Has Groupon made your life difficult?”

Crowley answered that with regards to Foursquare and Groupon, he still doesn’t know whether the latter company has had a net positive or negative effect on the former,”They’re getting people warmed up to the idea that you can build a customer base.”

Then Heilemann turned to the Google and Facebook rip offs both Facebook and Google Places.”Does that scare the shit out of you?” Heilemann asked Crowley. “It’s one of the most challenging things to deal with.” Crowley said he looked upon the competition with an attitude of “They’re either going to kill us or we’re going to survive this.”

“It is stressful, but looking at how we’re going to survive the Facebook onslaught is good for the company,” Crowley implied that trying to be everything on the Internet wasn’t the best strategy for Facebook. He referred to Facebook’s niche as communications, and Foursquare’s niche “connecting people offline.”

Despite encroaching competitors, the tempting acquisition target would stay likely independent even though he did not rule out acquisition, “The only thing we want to do is get the product to where we want it.”