invited him on Mixergy to talk about some of the game-changing ideas Oodle took on, like giving users analytics, partnering up with companies like Facebook and making classifieds social. This is the latest post from Mixergy So one of the challenges of commerce in a social network is that you're mainly talking to people you already know, which isn't necessarily ideal for commerce. Early in his career, Craig Donato worked for Excite, a pioneering search engine. When I asked him, "Why do you think Excite didn’t beat Yahoo?"

He came to Mixergy to talk about why Varien grew (it had a lot to do with focus) and how the company launched Magento (his developers pushed him to do it). think the biggest breakthrough for us came in 2003 or 2004 with the understanding that there was an open-source product called OS Commerce that had a large following — but the service providers on the market weren’t really sophisticated, and there weren’t that many of them. Roy Rubin was a student trying to make extra money on the side when he founded Varien, the company that went on to launch Magento, an ecommerce platform that enables billions of dollars in online sales.

Attendees will include leaders from all the major industry sectors such as media, entertainment, finance, publishing, venture funding, software, commerce, education, and many more. Mixergy Andrew Warner, Mixergy Howdy Campers! Digital Family Reunion is bringing all of the LA Tech/Business/Media scene together next month, for a nice holiday party at the Skirball Center!