Gone, but not forgotten

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Young entrepreneurs turn a Tweet from Richard Branson into $1 Million

Culled from Yahoo! News, this inspiring story will sure make you have a rethink on how you use social media.

By Dinah Wisenberg Brin


When opportunity tweets, tweet back. That may be the key lesson from young brother and sister entrepreneurs Scott and Stacey Ferreira, who recently landed nearly $1 million from Sir Richard Branson and Colorado venture investor Jerry Murdock for their startup -- when they weren’t even looking for funding.

Stacey, 19, and Scott, 21, started working on their business, MySocialCloud.com, last summer. The web application, which is currently in beta, aims to be the go-to place for people to manage their internet activity and securely store usernames and passwords, among other things.

Scott, who left the University of Southern California as a sophomore to pursue the venture, says he got the idea when his computer crashed and he lost a spreadsheet containing all his usernames and passwords. The now CEO decided to form the business after finding other password-storage sites lacking in one way or another.

For her part, Stacey recently finished her freshman year at New York University and is taking a leave of absence from school. She worked on the business in Los Angeles last summer with her brother and the company’s chief technology officer, Shiv Prakash.

MySocialCloud founders Scott and Stacey Ferreira responded to a tweet from Richard Branson to meet the billionaire in Miami. Two months later, he became one of the company’s investors.
“I was taking a break from working and I decided to check my Twitter,” says Stacey, adding that she didn’t regularly check her account. When she logged on, she saw a tweet from Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, who was offering a chance for people to fly to Miami and meet him for cocktails if they would donate $2,000 to his charity, Free the Children.

The Ferreiras, who are from Scottsdale, Ariz., applied right away. Stacey e-mailed Virgin at the address provided on the tweet, saying she and Scott (who was 20 at the time) weren’t old enough to drink cocktails but would love to come to Miami and meet Branson, once a teen entrepreneur himself. After learning they were able to go, the pair secured a $4,000 loan from their parents.

Just two days after receiving Branson’s tweet, Stacey and Scott were in Miami. There, they didn't sip cocktails but they did attend two parties at which Sir Richard himself was present. The siblings, says Stacey, were excited but not nervous as they met Branson at the first party at the Versace mansion.

“He just walked in the room, and we just started talking. I didn't have time to think about being nervous,” she says.

The siblings were among 18 people telling Branson what they were working on or about their life passions. "We gave him a little background on where we were from and what our service provided," Stacey says.

After getting Branson's contact info, the pair returned to California and kept in touch with the billionaire. They also chatted several times over the phone with Murdock, a co-founder of Insight Venture Partners, a venture capital firm in New York. Murdock flew to L.A. in August to visit the company’s office and asked the Ferreiras many questions about themselves, the business and their vision. The next day, Murdock announced that he and Branson would invest in MySocialCloud.com.

“It helped propel our business forward quite extensively,” says Scott who plans to use the investment mostly to support the nine people on his team.

Stacey is still in awe of it all -- giving special deference to the amount of stars that needed to align to make the deal happen and, as she puts it, the “amazing” way social media can change someone’s life. “If I hadn’t logged on Twitter and I hadn’t seen that tweet coming through my feed,” she says, “we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Scott believes that it helped that the company already had a functioning prototype in place. They were able to send links to Branson and to show the business to Murdock when he visited.

In March, the young company received another investment for an undisclosed amount from Photobucket co-founder Alex Welch, whom Scott calls a good mentor.

“I guess the biggest thing that I would advise [fellow young entrepreneurs] is take every opportunity,” says Stacey.

                                                     Stacey and Richard Branson

Petroleum Industry Bill:FEC approves bill, sends to NASS

Culled from Channels Television, Nigeria

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) for onward transmission to the National Assembly.

Briefing State House correspondents at the end of its weekly council meeting, the minister of petroleum resources, Mrs. Deziani Allison-Madueke said the new PIB which will ensure the independence of the regulators in the oil and gas sector as well as unbundle the NNPC, will yield high return on investments for Nigerians.

“The new PIB is going to make the oil industry more competitive and accountable. It proposes revolutionary changes in the industry,” said the minister

She said that the fiscal frameworks which delayed the bill in the past have been reworked and that when passed by the National Assembly, the country will remain an interesting investment destination for oil and gas investors.

FEC also directed the ministers of agriculture and finance to reduce the import duty rate for cassava enhancing enzymes from 10 to 0 percent as well as come up with a development fund that will support the value chain in the production of bread in an effort to promote cassava farming in the country as well as reduce the country’s dependency on importation of wheat.

Budget Office of the ministry of finance will manage the fund meant for small scale millers who may need additional support.

Port Harcourt emerges Unesco World Book Capital 2014

Culled from Vanguard





By McPhilips Nwachukwu & Japhet Alakam

LAGOS—Port Harcourt, the capital of River State, has after a competitive bid with other 10 countries , including; Ganja in Azerbaidjan; Incheon, Republic of Korea; Krakow, Poland; Lyon, France; Moscow, Russia and Oxford, United Kingdom emerged the preferred host city for the 2014 UNESCO World Book Capital.

UNESCO World Book Capital was established in 2001 after the successful flagging off UNESCO World Copyright Day with the nomination of Madrid, Spain as the first World Book Capital City.

The selection of Port Harcourt by a committee of the World Book Capital 2014, comprising representatives drawn from International Booksellers Federation, IBF, International Federation of Library Association, IFLA and International Publishers Association, IPA, followed a bidding entry by Port Harcourt based book promotion outfit, the Rainbow Book Club.

Be Careful of Impostors Pretending to be Me, Says Mike Ezuruonye

Nollywood actor, Mike Ezuruonye has advised his fans to be wary of being defrauded by impostors posing as celebs on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Ezuruonye who let out the advice on twitter this evening, tweeted “I have heard loads of complaints…. people posing to be me defrauding my fans and friends of money and valuables.”

“(I have) found out (that) impostors have my name on over 11 Facebook pages. I left Facebook three years ago, and this (twitter) is my only means of communication,” says the Nigerian actor.

Mike Ezuruonye’s twitter handle is @realmikeezu.

Seen Samsung Galaxy S III?

“The Galaxy S3 is not a cheap-feeling phone. It's got a really solid Gorilla Glass 2 front, a well-packaged interior and a more robust battery cover. It's polycarbonate rather than bog-standard plastic,” writes Gareth Beavis  in a review.  “….this is a phone definitely worth checking out.”

Just got my own Samsung Galaxy S III, and I’m having a wonderful experience with this android phone. I sincerely recommend you go for it.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/samsung-galaxy-s3-1078667/review

INSECURITY: Should Nigeria Legalize Hand Gun?

Nigeria isn't at war. But horrible news of senseless killings in different parts of the country confront the people daily. The situation has fired up arguments for the amendment of the country's constitution to allow the component states in Nigeria to establish their own police. Now there is another agitation: legalize hand guns!

"I strongly support legalization of hand gun, because it's only God and Gun that can give real protection now (in Nigeria)," says an agitated Nigerian on twitter.

So, should Nigeria make it legal for its citizens to carry hand guns about for self-defence? Will such a proposal help Nigeria solve some of its security challenges?