Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, visited the FH Köln in April and conducted a presentation about Microsoft. He also mentioned BizSpark and “Unternimm was.”. The corresponding slide showed the logos of the “Unternimm was.” startups – including the SnipClip logo!

PS: Thanx Tobias for making me aware of this video!

During last week we gave multiple interviews. Here is the list:

• GameBizz:

Link:

• Michael Reuter (CEO von YiGG)

• Microsoft Deutschland
• Süddeutsche Zeitung Nr. 121, Seite R 6 (not online available)

Here is an interview with Sebastian, our CTO, at Channel 8 about SnipClip and Microsoft BizSpark:

During the last months we received multiple support from Microsoft Germany: Christian, who is a member of our advisory board, introduced us to several companies, Carsten invited us to BizSpark and we also had the chance to speak at the Xtopia conference in Berlin. Now, SnipClip took the next step and became a member of the “unternimm was.” high-tech initiative from Microsoft. Our development team will benefit from this cooperation through technical support and coaching as well as our business team will profit by Microsoft’s contacts and reputation. I think there will be further good news concerning Microsoft & SnipClip in the near future. So stay tuned and have a good time!

Microsoft published the presentations from the Xtopia conference as online videos today. Here is the online video from my presentation about making money with virtual goods in social communities:

“In den USA beläuft sich der Umsatz mit virtuellen Gütern bereits auf über eine Milliarde Dollar, dann muss in Deutschland doch auch Geld damit zu verdienen sein“ erläutert Martin Szugat seine Motivation für SnipClip.com. Zusammen mit zwei Freunden gründete er SnipClip.com und konnte jüngst die ersten Startup-Preise sammeln. Social Communities erfreuen sich immer größerer Beliebtheit und daher müssen sich nach Meinung von Martin Szugat alle Händler und Marken mit ihnen auseinander setzen. „Wenn wir unsere digitalen Produkte verkaufen wollen, müssen wir in die Social Communities, dort sind unsere Kunden. Außerdem setzen wir auf die Sammelleidenschaft der Deutschen.“, Im Rahmen der Microsoft Gründerinitiative wird SnipClip.com uns ihre Lösung für den „realen“ Vertrieb von virtuellen Gütern auf der Social Community Plattform Facebook zeigen.

“unternimm was.”- die Microsoft Gründerinitiative: Startup3: SnipClip.net – Geld verdienen mit virtual goods und social communities

The introduction is by Carsten Rudolph, head of the “Unternimm was”. initiative of Microsoft. “Unternimm was.” supports startups not only in a technical way, what most people would expect, but also in business development. So thanks Carsten for your support!

Yesterday, Microsoft announced at the Xtopia conference in Berlin the availability of BizSpark in Germany. BizSpark is a global program by Microsoft to help startups to accellerate their product development by providing nearly free access to their development tools (Visual Studio, Expression) and server software (Dynamics, Sharepoint, Windows, …) and offering them support and partnerships. Microsoft, especially Christian Klasen and Carsten Rudolph, already helped us enormously by introducing us to their partners and thus our potential partners. Today, we were invited to participate in BizSpark, which will be very helpful for our business, too! So thanks a lot for your support, Microsoft!

As a small team of young founders we do not cover every aspect of our business, but we have advisors who guide us:

• Christoph Klasen is a senior business development manager at Microsoft. He brought us in contact with content providers, gave us a lot of feedback on our business concept and gave us the opportunity to present us at the Xtopia conference in November in Berlin.
• Jan Schlink is a marketer working at Metaio – the German augmented reality company! He is well experienced in B2C as well as in B2B marketing and he is creator of “SnipClip”, our company name.
• Jochen Krisch is a well-known German e-commerce expert and blogger. We had several workshops with Jochen where he gave us valueable insights in how e-commerce in general works.
• Mark Möbius works at the UnternehmerTUM, our official partner. The UnternehmerTUM provides us with free office spaces and – more important – with advice from multiple sources.

Thanks for everything you did for us in the past and everything you will do in the future! And have a good time!

Martin

… via HP computers:

Microsoft announced this morning that HP computers will soon be shipped with Live.com as their default search engine. The big news, though, isn’t that Live’s hit-it-with-a-stick ugly search results will be placed in front of millions of eyes. The most important part of the announcement is that the search toolbar will be powered by Silverlight, Microsoft’s product that competes with the nearly ubiquitous Flash from Adobe. The competition could be great for consumers.

Read on: Microsoft to See Silverlight Installed on Millions of HP Computers – ReadWriteWeb

Good news for all Facebook and Live Messenger users (like me):

If you are a user of Live Messenger, you have probably noticed a new feature added to the application. Facebook is now integrated into the application enabling users to view and update their status update as well as view what their friends are up to. This integration highlights the partnership between Microsoft and Facebook and also signals the continuing prevalence of Facebook across other applications on the web.

Via Microsoft Integrates Facebook Into Live Messenger – The Unofficial Facebook Blog

Oh shit:

What seems to be happening is that Google has finally realized that they are competing for developers’ time, even those that they are not employing. After seeing thousands of Facebook developers build over 26,000 applications in a year, it’s no wonder that the company has become heavily invested in the fight for developer attention.

From Google Opens to Futher the “Platform Wars” – Covering All That’s Social On the Web

Microsoft had realized this two centuries before: the developers (= producers) are the key to the success for every platform! Microsoft did a great job in the past years to build strong developer communities and they spend a lot of money to build and extend these communities and so does Facebook, but not Google …