Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Karen Hartline of Mashable talks about the upcoming Mashable Tour coming to Austin

What is your background?

I lived in Oklahoma for 20 years and moved to California recently. Later the opportunity with Mashable came up. It’s a startup with some great things in the works.

What is the idea behind Mashable?

It’s the number one news source for social media and networking. Three years ago, our CEO started blogging about social networks. No one else was reporting on it, and it just grew as interest grew. Since then it has grown into one of the top 10 blogs in the world.

We’re trying to bring people face to face to share ideas. We have 15 people on full-time staff in both editorial and business side. It’s a virtual company in that we all work from home. We have core teams in San Francisco and New York with writers spread across the US.

What is the Mashable Tour?

They are networking events with plenty of interaction. We’re holding an event in Austin in a few weeks. The event lasts from 7 to 10pm. Startups and entrepreneurs come to learn and share information about what’s going on.

What trends do you see out there?

Twitter is big. We use it all the time. We are working on ways to display Twitter feed at each Mashable event. The further east you go in the US, the less people know about it, but it’s big in Austin. I just wish it were up all the time. I get the ‘Fail Whale’ too often.

Another great trend is online conferencing. There’s a company calledEventVue out of Boulder. They are an online community for conferences and events. Once you register it pulls your information in and searches for your Facebook and Twitter account, and creates a “chatter” area that people at the event can use.

There are also social media camps that are becoming popular. They are similar to Bar Camp. They’re typically free and it’s a great way to connect people.

Best regards,
Hall T.

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