This week, cloud-based customer service tool Zendesk celebrated their 5000th customer since launching their European Head Office in London one year ago. Yesterday we visited their official office opening party and had the opportunity to interview the CEO of Zendesk, Mikkel Svane! With an impressive customer list of big corporations such as GroupOn, MSNBC.com, Lonely Planet and Sony Music, to SMEs and other startups such as Dropbox, Zendesk has grown to having over 15,000+ companies as part of their customer portfolio. On the age old debate of Silicon Valley vs the European Tech Scene, Mikkel said that moving to San Francisco really helped him scale the business, and that any tech company wanting get investment and traction should seriously consider moving to Silicon Valley to kick start their startup. What do you think? Is is it – ‘The Only Way is Silicon Valley’ or does London’s Tech City have just as much to offer startups? Watch the video above to hear more from Mikkel.

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Looking through our vault, we recovered some never-before-seen footage from the very first LonData meetup back in November 2011! Since then it’s been going strong with 237 members. Londata III – ‘Data be the food of monsters’ is coming up on the 26th of April, with Moshi Monsters CTO Toby Moore. It’s a great place to get together, listen to a great speaker, and talk data!
Check out the video above to see what they thought!

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So often, Africa is only associated with its struggles. Ikenna Azuike wants to make you think of the positive aspects of Africa; it’s a large continent with plenty of potential! While there are many serious issues to deal with, Ikenna choses to showcase the booming talent of Africa – all in a fun way. He’s been dressed up as a woman, a preacher, and so many more in his series ‘What’s Up Africa?’ found at his youtube channel.

But that’s not it. He’s created Strawberry Earth, a site that offers ‘green’ deals, discounted products and experiences that adhere to the Strawberry Principles. There are also events such as the Green Film Making Competition, the Strawberry Earth Film Festival, and theStrawberry Earth Hotel Crash that call forth creative people to make a difference. During the hotel crash, they raised €9,750 that went towards making the hotel more eco-friendly!

Strawberry Earth is looking to go global, not bad for starting as a two-person blog on WordPress!

Check out what he has to say!

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Recently we caught up with one of our fellow online video evangelists, Catherine Allen of Ember Television. They are a Birmingham based service that makes videos from ‘Your Church Wedding’ to a flash mob for charity. Similarly, to our sister site, Newspepper.com, Ember Television produce online video content, and also work closely with marketing agencies for distribution.

Ember Television’s new idea is (tentatively) called ‘audience looping’ where the target audience provides ideas for videos they want to watch. Ember Television provides a ‘matchmaking’ service, pairing the audiences with ideas to the clients with money to bring these ideas to life.

Watch the video interview above to find out more on how this process works and her advice for other production companies.

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Exciting news for event organisers, Eventbrite have just released their first UK Social Commerce Report and Techfluff.tv had the exclusive opportunity to interview Tamara Mendelsohn, VP of Marketing and author of the report, about the findings. In the video, she talks about what has been happening at Eventbrite since their London office opened late last year. Highlights include: hitting the 50 millionth ticket milestone; UK ticket sales totalling £16,456,400 in 2011 and doubling 2010’s £8,834,590 result and Eventbrite becoming part of the UKTI Tech City. Also, this week, they opened up a new office in Paris and launched the site in French. Watch the video to find out more about the report’s findings and the innovative use of QR codes to check in event attendees via Eventbrite’s iPhone app.

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When you walk down the street or take the tube, almost everyone has out his or her mobile. It’s a convenient way to message friends, play games, listen to music, and surf the web, all from a device you can fit in your pocket. Of course, this turned mobiles into a great marketing platform.

In Barcelona, the Mobile World Congress hosted their largest event yet, with more than 67,000 attendees! European Leaders presented Hot Topics Mobile, attended by the top 250 mobile influencers. Two panels about Mobile Commerce and Mobile Communications included panelists such as Bill Gajda, Global Head of Visa Mobile; Sebastian Siemaitkowski, CEO Klarna; and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare.

The panels, “Changing the Way we Shop” and “Is Facebook the Future?” covered questions such as how mobile shopping will change the payment infrastructure and how mobile usage will affect the future of connectivity. As of now, 50 to 70 percent of Facebook access in emerging markets is mobile!

Check out the video to see what the panelist and audience had to say!

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Social Media World Forum is coming to Olympia, London between 27 and 28 of March for their biggest show yet! These two days are going to be filled with about 4000 industry professionals and over 150 speakers, including Bruce Daisley, UK Director of Sales for Twitter; Ian Carrington, Head of Mobile EMEA for Google; Colin Smith, UK Marketing Solutions Director for LinkedIn and other representatives from Ford Motors, Foursquare, Microsoft, and CNN.

It’s a great chance to network with industry professionals and learn about how social media can be incorporated into business to reach a wider audience. The two-day agenda includes workshops and seminars in four categories; Social Media, Social TV, Social Shopping, and Marketing Tech. (The full agenda can be found here!)

The Workshop Pass includes the exhibition, marketing tech track, access to all workshop streams, the Social Soiree, SMWF Connect and more! Make sure to get your ticket here!

Check out the video from their event in 2010!

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Today StartupBus America officially kicks off and we give you an exclusive sneak peek in to the buses and find out what’s happening today!
We’ll have a special guest, Founder Rackspace and will be dialing into The New York bus to see their progress as they hit the road.
You can also tune into all the action via TheNextWeb.com. StartupBus.tv is brought to you by Viadeo, TheNextWeb, LiveU, Tropo and Pop17 and produced by Newspepper Media. Follow all the live action and updates at #StartupBusTV

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We all know that democracy affects us- but how? Parliament Week hosted events for people of all ages to learn about the history and function of the House of Parliament from the history of bonfire night for ages 5-11 to a half-day event on how to plan and operate a political campaign.

This was the first time Parliament Week was held. It ran from 31 October to 6 November 2011, not only in London, but throughout the UK, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The theme of the week was ‘Stories of Democracy’. Some of the events, such as Hansard Society Young People’s Question Time were geared towards getting the younger generations involved with politics in a fun way. During this time, the youth got to quiz members of Parliament of the events of the day. It was also the first time BBC Question Time was broadcasted from The House of Parliament itself!

Check out what people had to say!

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Psychology of being online. Live Google hang out. Sex, love, and social media. This is only the beginning of what happened at the biggest Social Media Week in London yet. With over 15,000 attendees for 180 talks and panels all across London, all facets of social media were covered. Anyone hoping to break into social media was there, as well as experts who have been in the field for ages.

In only three years, Social Media Week has expanded to 21 cities including Los Angeles, Rome, Paris, Berlin, and Hong Kong. It’s a major networking event, as well as a place to discuss how social media has impacted the world, and what the future of it might be.

If you missed out on the events, don’t worry! Catch up on Livestream! They have events from not only London, but from all over the world!

We were able to attend the fabulous closing party, where we caught up with sponsors such as Phil Ryan of 3 Monkeys Communications and Francesca Heath and Lauren Macready of Chinwag, and people who attended events. Check out what they had to say!

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