Many people know who Jay-Z is, and know that he is a rapper who has been pretty popular over the fifteen or so years, and that he is married to one of the most beautiful women on the planet. However, most people are surprised to find out that he is an entrepreneur, and a very good one at that. The fact that in 2009 he had a net worth of over $150 Million surely attests to that.

The following is a list of Jay-Z’s very successful entrepreneurial ventures:

• In 2003, Jay-Z opened his successful 40/40 Sports Bar in New York, with a second location in New Jersey.
• Jay-Z is a part owner of the NBA New Jersey Nets
• Former CEO of Def Jam Recordings, one of the most successful recording labels in rap music history
• Founder of Roc-A-Fella Records
• Foudner of Roc Nation Records
• Founder of Rocawear clothing, which records annual sales of $700 Million and which Jay-Z sold for $204 Million in 2007 while retaining many of his stakes in the company

On top of all this Jay-Z currently holds the record for the most #1 Albums on the Billboard 200 by a solo artist. As you can see, it is very clear that Jay-Z truly knows what it means to be an entrepreneur and to take advantages of needs in different markets.

I was doing some reading on news sites about recent stories involving Facebook and found some disturbing stories about Facebook. By now everyone is familiar with the ridiculous things that are beginning to happen on Facebook, such as the countless pages that you can become a fan of, or the many different games that you can play, and I personally think that all of these things are pretty stupid and pointless. However, the articles which I read have to do with some completely different aspects of Facebook that are just as out of control as all the games and groups.

You used to have to be in college to have a Facebook, but when they decided to allow anyone and everyone with a computer to make a profile, kids as young as 11 and 12 started creating pages. Evidence of the craziness of this is the fact that a 16 year old in Arkansas is suing his mom for “harassing” him using his Facebook. The teen claims that his mom hacked into his Facebook account, changed his password, and wrote things about him on the site. The mom claims that she did this because she was becoming worried about some of his activity on Facebook. The fact that this is even going to court shows how crazy people in America have become.You can decide what you think about this, but in my opinion the kid is 16 and lives at home under his mother’s care, so she has every right to monitor what he does online and put an end to anything that she deems unacceptable.

What is going on in America today?

I was browsing through Tech news articles on Google when I cam across a very interesting piece from the Washington Post about the popularity of the relatively new chat website called ChatRoulette. I have never used the site, nor do I really plan on ever checking it out, but I found the information in the article to be very intriguing.

ChatRoulette is a video chat website which randomly matches people together. Once you get bored or weirded out by the person you are talking to, you click a button to me matched with someone new, hence the “roulette” part of the site’s name.

The site, which has an average chat time of 2.8 minutes per person per session, quadrupled in visitors from 944,000 in January to almost 4 Million in February. Many people believe this to be due to the fact that it is a relatively new site which is generating a lot of curiosity, but either way, there seem to be a lot of people looking for someone to talk to.

The other day I was searching around the web looking for something to write about and decided to check out StumbleUpon.com. I had heard a lot about the site but had never actually used it. StumbleUpon is a website that allows you to select your areas of interest and then begin “stumbling” onto random web pages that fall into your interest categories by clicking the button at the top of the page.

I ended up spending close to 45 minutes clicking the Stumble button and finding new sites, pictures and videos relating to my interests. The best part was that for the most part, I found the content which StumbleUpon suggested to be very interesting to me. And if I didn’t like it, I could just click the Stumble button again and didn’t have to waste any time trying to find something new on my own. One of the funniest sites I found using StumbleUpon was the following list of real quotations from courtrooms:

http://rinkworks.com/said/courtroom.shtml

If you have never used StumbleUpon before, I would highly recommend checking it out. You never know what new, interesting content you will find with it.

An interesting thing is happening on the internet. New statistics are arising which show that the number of search queries in the United States are declining at a remarkable level. Search traffic on the web is slowing down as people re beginning to search for less and less.

There are a few different theories as to why this is, with one being that the search industry is maturing and growing and that there will not be anymore significant growth until people start using more advanced means of searching, such as on their mobile phones. Another reason that has been given for the slowdown is that people are running out of searches, and until people find new things to query search engine traffic will continue to slow.

Whatever the reason, I do not think that these stats are reason for search companies to worry, because it is impossible for people to ever run out of things to search for, and as long as there are people and search engines, there will be countless queries made.