I’m sure these little tidbits warrant a larger posting (for each of them) but I wanted to get them out into the open as they are/were on my mind:

• Is it me or have you been receiving a significant volume of LinkedIn and Facebook invitations lately?  Jason Calcannis and Fred Wilson have both posted about this, but I’ve noticed it as well.  People from whom I never thought of would join these networks have sent me invites and it’s nice to see folks online.  I still am standing strong on my thoughts:  I have a lot of “friends”, but “friends” exist on many levels… and no social network that I know of today has this.
• Guitar Hero took over my bachelor party.  Well, not really, but when we were in the RV, that was the dominate activity.  There are only 1 or 2 hardcore gamers in my group of friends, but most of the non-gamers took a huge liking to Guitar Hero and they played it for hours on end.  One of my good friends who now lives out in San Francisco labeled it, “The Fun Killer.”  The Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero are doing some interesting things for the games industry.

More tidbits later…

Fox 11 Los Angeles did a 3 minute clip regarding an emerging game, MapleStory, which focuses on how gamers are in a craze about the game. Some gamers are spending $50/week in virtual items for the game and others are stealing money from their folks credit cards to pay for new goods.

Take a peak at the clip and would love to hear some comments. There is no doubt that the gaming industry is in a state of flux and the lifetime value of a gamer is much higher than the traditional retail price of a video game.

I believe that the winners in the video game industry are going to be the publishers/developers who adapt their models to meet these new opportunities.  Which publishers will be able to do so?  Which will not?

I’ve reiterated the same comment over the past few years which is that the video game industry is going thru a renaissance that the music industry is currently in.  The traditional ways of monetizing your assets are changing and you need to do new things to keep up with gamers.  If I played the stock markets more often (unlike other friends and family members), I’d put some skin in the game on publishers who are going to retool their business to account for these new opportunities.

EA and Activision have publicly come out and stated that they want to pursue these new revenue opportunities.  Behind the scenes, we know that many others are as well.

I’m going to be devoid of the blogosphere starting today thru Sunday as some of my best friends are taking me out on my bachelor party.  I have no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing - but in 30 minutes, they will be arriving to pick me up.  Stories & Pics to follow…. have a great weekend!

Interesting links to read:

• My friends over at Union Square Ventures just invested in Twitter.  This wasn’t a secret, was it?
•  Nine Million Now Live in World of Warcraft.  90th most populated country in the world.
•  Evolution of Dance.  One of my favorite YouTube videos.
• FastLaneDaily.  My brothers car show; check it out.
• Virtual Item Sales in Korea & US.  Adrian puts together a fantastic posting.
• Twinity, coming soon.  5 things you didn’t know about this virtual world.
• Crain’s reports on IGA Worldwide’s latest funding announcement:  $25M.
• 5 Money Making Opportunities on Facebook
• Check out some great music on Haystack
  

Adios!

I’m not sure if you listen to podcasts or not, but Eric Schonfeld, editor-at-large over at Business 2.0 has released his CNNMoney show, The New Disruptors, on iTunes.  Certainly worth a listen, as I always love hearing other entrepreneurs tell their tale.

My idea was to create a video series identifying and profiling the businesses and entrepreneurs with the greatest potential to shake up the status quo—the ones trying to create the next YouTube, the next Skype, the next Craigslist. These were The New Disruptors.

The word “disruptor” has gotten me thinking about entrepreneurship and creating businesses.  What happens when you create a business that doesn’t disrupt a market?  It surely could be sustainable and profitable, but what are the pros/cons of doing either?

Businesses that disrupt markets successfully sell for very high prices because those who disrupt take a huge risk when starting out.  I wonder if anyone keeps a list of market disrupting ideas… anyone?

Harvard has a nice review of New Market Disruption, if you’re curious to read more about it.

Starbucks being analyzed for disruption

For the first time this decade, Activision edges out Electronic Arts as the #1 third party game publisher.  For those of you who don’t know what a 3rd party publisher is, it’s essentially a publisher who isn’t attached to major game console or platform.  According to NPD data, Activision posted $387.8 million in sales from January to June, edging out EA, with $365.7 million during the same period. Activision is reaping the rewards of having several high-profile franchises, including Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk and Call of Duty.

Congratulations to Activision… though I still love EA Sports titles!

I decided to take some time and update my blogroll as I hadn’t done it within the last 6 months or so. According to Google Reader, I have over 164 subscriptions to RSS feeds which is quite a lot. I do not link back to everyone I read, but the blogroll on my site comes from people I highly respect and have established communication online and in some cases, offline as well.

New additions:

• Andrew Parker - analyst at Union Square Ventures, always adds a different take on things and asks solid questions
• Andrew Chen - co-founder of Revenue Science and EIR at Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Adrian Crook - games industry guru and author of his own blog, FreeToPlay
  
• Howard Lindzon - Wall St. wizard and founder of WallStrip (since sold to CBS)
• Nabeel Hyatt - founder and of Conduit Labs, a company looking to revolutionize virtual worlds

If you’re reading some truly fascinating commentary on the net that you think I’d like, I’d love to hear about it. Leave it in the comments section and I’ll get right back to you.

If you’re in the video game industry or watching it closely, you probably want to have Adrian Crook on your radar screen as you probably already subscribe to Raph Koster and Nabeel Hyatt’s RSS feeds.  Adrian is head of Relic Labs (THQ), trying to figure out new ways of developing and monetizing games through different digital ways.

I have had the chance to talk with Adrian offline and he’s extremely passionate about the space and has a lot of great thoughts about the future of gaming, as well, as, loves my favorite sport:  hockey.

Adrian has 2 posts that you should read it you’re following the MMO/Casual game development space:

• 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Most Successful Shockwave MMO 
• Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in Virtual Worlds and MMOs

Lots of great insight over on Adrian’s blog and look forward to linking to him more…

Tonight’s episode of Entourage showed how a partnership between two long-time friends (Eric & Vince) got extremely rocky.  In the final minutes of the episode, Eric as Vince’s manager, decided that doing the movie isn’t a smart idea and contrary to Eric’s wishes, Vince stated that he was going to move forward with the movie.  We’ve seen a few bubbles of frustration of Eric in the recent weeks of Entourage but I think that this particular episode and issue has put “E” over the top.

This is no different than partnerships in startups or any other facet of life.  In startups, you usually have one or more partners who you need to trust implicitly in the early days to get your company off the ground.  If someone is handling marketing and the other, operations, and the 3rd handling finance, you need to make sure that each is doing their own role.  If there is a tiff between anyone or everyone, then the balance gets disrupted and it could be extremely  difficult to get back on track.  Managing relationships is one of the toughest parts of a startup… it’s like the book, Lord of the Flies.  Many startups implode, not explode.

Transparency between founders/members of the company is of uptmost importance.  You need to be honest with everyone about your feelings and what you’re thinking at most times.  Do not let issues bubble up or hold grudges… if there is an issue at a moment in time, address it.  Do not let it sit.

There are going to be some serious issues coming down the road for E & Vince which are indicative of many startups.

I spent part of my Sunday afternoon reading a presentation given by Paul Heydon, Managing Director of Avista Partners.  The purpose of the presentation was a strategic overview of the space for M&A purposes.  Being in the industry, I found most of the information redundant, but I did like how he highlighted the following:

Trends in Industry

• More developers are switching from high end console to casual games
• Game portals/aggregators growing in popularity with consumers; watching less TV; advertising is a major source of revenue
• Mix of ad-supported, casual games and paid premium games
• In-game advertising is a new source of revenue for developers/publishers
• Casual MMO’s will grow (i.e. Runescape)
• Business models selling items in game growing quickly (i.e. Bigpoint)
• Social 3d chat games will grow (i.e. Second Life, Habbo Hotel)
• Micropayments

Opportunities for Casual Games

• Acquire or be acquired
• Raise money to grow and/or acquire
• Build D2C business on own websites with a focus on community
• Monetize across other platforms by licensing or in-house for mobile, console, in addition to PC in-store
• Sell items in-game
• Publish games by episode
• Build advertising revenues
• Localize sites for key non-english countries
• Outsouce seelct development pieces overseas
• Develop game widgets for social networks (i.e. Bunchball)

Also, there is one area of the presentation I do like… Paul talks about how World of Warcraft is NOT the holy grail of online games.  Reasons for this is that WoW attracts only hardcore gamers and not the mass market.  Of WoW’s 8 or 9 million subscribers, that’s a distant second or third compared to the 50 million users worldwide of Maplestory or the 66 million users of Habbo Hotel.  He also points out that the lifecycle of most MMORPG’s have a life cycle of less than five years.

With the iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, and other devices top of mind when you think of Apple, don’t discount them in terms of computers. They’re back and climbing up the charts. The percentages bellow represent 2Q07 marketshare according to IDC.

1. Dell / 28.4%
2. HP / 23.6%
3. Gateway / 5.6%
4. Apple / 5.6%
5. Toshiba / 5.3%
6. Acer / 5.2%

I’m excited to see Apple climb the marketshare ladder again. I just hope that the little Cupertino company doesn’t expand too quickly and dillute their brand whilst extending their line.