Europe's Web Startups are back – Last.fm, Netlog and Pageflakes

On September 12th- 13th the international „Media in Transition Conference 2007“ opens its doors. The focus of the conference is the structural transition in the media industry. Innovative media companies, researchers and strategists from UK, USA and Europe are discussing the present and future of Internet media at the Goethe Forum in Munich. The invited speakers are among others - Martin Stiksel (Last.fm), Lorenz Bogaert (Netlog), Jeremy Geelan (Social Computing Magazine), Christoph Janz (Pageflakes), John Buckman (Creative Commons), Adrian Holovaty (Django), Simon Willison (Django,

ex-Yahoo!), Matthew Gertner (AllPeers), Les Ottolenghi (Intent Media), Annet Aris (INSEAD, McKinsey), Alexander Wolf (CEO/ Legal Adviser GEMA) Jeremy Geelan, Founder and Publisher of Social Computing Magazine, writes about the Media in Transition Conference 07: “Since the big growth potential in media business lies in the area of user generated content, it is refreshing to see a conference taking shape in Europe that offers attendees insight into the techniques of the so-called Social Web, or “Live Web” – Web 2.0, Social Networks, Blogs, Video/Audio, Digital Rights, Rich Media, P2P, Mobile Web”. See
The Media in Transition Conference features three of the four big European Internet success stories: Last.fm, Netlog and Pageflakes (while Joost still remains in beta).

All but Pageflakes, which is financed by Benchmark Capital, are financed by Index Ventures, Europe's London based prominent Internet Venture Capitalist. Martin Stiksel's Last.fm social networking site has recently been sold to CBS in May 2007 for 280 Million USD, while leaving the founders in charge. Last.fm is considered Europe's top Internet success with over 20 million users and a steep growth rate of 20% every month, especially after Facebook and MySpace integration became available this year. Last.fm's system builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste, showing their favorite artists and songs on a customizable profile web page and uses the statistics it gathers from users to recommend music and find other music fans with similar interests. Due to the massive amount of data, Last.fm’s automatic music discovery algorithms are far superior to any editorial rating technique, claims Mr. Stiksel. The Media in Transition Conference 2007 offers a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art social media innovations, communication and business models, as well as distribution methods used on the Internet today. Find out more about “Media in Transition 2007” The conference cost for both days is 890, - Euro. Daily tickets are sold for under 490, - Euro. Early bird registration (15% discount) is available until July 15th, 2007.