http://www.surphace.com/blog Connecting the Conversation Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:53:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Succession stories are often associated with anxiety, trepidation and bewilderment; particularly when a founder passes over the reigns.  It's the exception, rather than the norm, when succession happens naturally, which is why I'm so thrilled with the way Sphere/Surphace's leadership has evolved. It will come as no surprise to our ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/11/04/passing-the-torch/ It’s been almost five years since Martin Remy, Steve Nieker, Toni Schneider and I started working on Sphere.  For me, it's around 10% of a life. And it's a time when I find myself thinking a lot about a particular question: What do I want to do next? In 2005, I ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/11/04/next/ While already a few months overdue, I'm as thrilled as ever to publicly welcome Andres Moran to the Sphere Surphace team.  Andres joins us as Director of Business Development and comes over from Milestone Venture Partners, where he did a two-year Associate stint and skillfully mapped out the startup landscape.  As a ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/11/02/welcome-andres-moran/ We’re super excited to formally announce that Sphere has a new name.  Our new name is Surphace. The obvious question is why, in the midst of continued success – growth and distribution – are we changing our name?  In most cases, businesses change their names in order to relaunch, restart and/or ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/10/19/goodbye-sphere-hello-surphace/ A few weeks back, we ran an intensive analysis with a few of our largest, most integrated partners to measure the aggregate value created by having Sphere on their pages.  We measured and tracked click-thru rates, subsequent PVs resulting from readers who engaged with Sphere and inbound traffic resulting from ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/10/15/how-does-a-35-ecpm-sound-to-you/ We've been fairly quiet on the blog recently, but only because we've been so focused on our continued partner growth, new product pipeline and a few top secret projects...to be announced soon. Over the past year, as our analytics have steadily caught up with the swift pace of our partner roll-outs, ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/10/06/most-clicked-on-area-of-aol-news/ We've been preaching this mantra for some time,  but as web usage continues to evolve, the truthiness of our claims becomes all the more clear.  Below the fold (BTF) is where you find the action on the article page.  Heat-map studies support the intuitive logic indicating that online readers are ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/06/16/btf-is-where-you-find-the-action/ Our Director of Product Development, Harry Kautzman, recently reviewed the Netbeans IDE for PHP development on his blog.  His post was discovered and featured prominently today on Netbeans News as the lead featured article. Way to go Harry!  You make us oh-so proud. http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/05/09/harry-gets-published/ Today, we are psyched to announce the first fruits of a project that began last fall with a conversation that sprouted from an interview on NPR-WNYC.  Six months after that interview, we partnered with Tribune to power contextual content syndication on their 10 news sites - LA Times, Chicago Tribune, ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/04/30/tribunela-times-welcome-to-the-sphere-family/ We're psyched to announce that Josh Guttman has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Sphere. Josh joined us in November of 2007. His primary focus was on helping Sphere accelerate its Publisher footprint. He excelled in that role, quickly becoming a leading contributor to our extensive network of A-list partners.  ... http://www.surphace.com/blog/2009/03/06/a-new-chief/