The anticipation is palpable. Hundreds of hackers have congregated outside Manhattan’s Pier 94, planning, strategizing, and praying to baby Jesus that their fates will be similar to those of Group.me and Docracy . We’ve seen plenty of Hackathon winners go on to do incredible things , make millions of dollars, and rise to startup stardom levels, but the journey isn’t a simple one

Comcast’s plans to do away with its 250 GB data cap and charge users based upon usage marks the end of an era for cable TV providers, and for the online video industry. No longer will users be able to endlessly stream all the content their hearts desire. Not just that, but the fact that usage-based pricing is arriving at the same time that more, higher-quality content is appearing online could have a dampening effect on demand for services like Netflix or Hulu Plus.

Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions.

Facebook’s eight year history is famously speckled with a number of buyout offers from the likes of Yahoo , Google , and Microsoft . But each time, founder Mark Zuckerberg opted to keep his company independent — against the advice of many.

SecondMarket, which has served as a hub for transactions of pre-IPO Facebook stock for a few years, will have to find some new venture-backed companies to pique investor interest this year. While Facebook is a big loss , there are plenty of other startups that have become hot prospects. The New York-based company, which arranges secondary sales of stock in venture-backed or privately-held companies, said Pinterest, Warby Parker and Stripe are the companies that have attracted the most new interest in the last quarter, according to this report.