Publish2 gets first-round funding

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Howard Owens

Congratulations to my friend, Scott Karp, whose fledging business took a big step forward this week.

Today we’re announcing that Publish2 has raised $2.75 million in Series A funding from Velocity Interactive Group — Jonathan Miller and Ross Levinsohn will be joining our board (along with Jeff Jarvis and Luke Beatty, who have been close advisors).

Note that along with Howard Weaver, Jack Lail I’m an advisor to Publish2.

Publish2 has a lot of potential to both help bring to the top of the link pile the best of online journalism, but also give newspaper sites a deeper source of content.

I need more friends on Digg … maybe

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Howard Owens

If you’re on Digg, you can find me here.

A few weeks ago, I finally decided to start trying out Digg. There is a perception out there that Digg isn’t as good as it used to be, since it got away from its tech roots. I actually find it more interesting now. It does surface some pretty amazing stuff that I might otherwise miss.

It’s a little difficult to submit items (Scott Karp did right with Publish2 by creating a tool bar), but I’ve been making a submission here and there (and not just my own stuff). But with only three or four friends, and not much of a reputation, my original submissions get little notice.

Maybe if I had more friends … I don’t know … my participation in Digg is still in the “experiment” stage … so next step is to see if having more friends does anything for me.

Covering Super Tuesday socially

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Howard Owens

If you need something to spice up your Super Tuesday, why not help cover it socially? Check out the Publish2 Super Tuesday project.

There’s a huge opportunity to help voters find the best election coverage in the sea of election content. Yeah, you can do it by yourself — but on the web, the larger the network, the more influential the linking — time to break down those traditional media silos.

Great chance to learn and experiment with journalists using web 2.0 tools to engage audience.

UPDATE: More on Super Tuesday … a regular reader from the Chicago Tribune dropped sends along word that they’ll be doing interactive video chats tomorrow.