Archive for January, 2008
I was nominated today by Gavin Heaton for the “Thinking Blogger Award” and it’s always flattering to get some recognition every now and again. For those of you who don’t know who Gavin is, he’s one of the masterminds behind the crowdsourced book, Age of Conversation (of which I’ll be participating in the second version… more on that on another day).
The way it works apparently is as follows (copied from Gavin’s blog):
- If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
- Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
- Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote
So with this award, I get to nominate 5 other bloggers who make me think… so here we go:
Fred Wilson - always writing about the digital media and technology space from interesting perspectives of both a user, an investor, and a wallflower. Love his personal touches on his blog which provide context to much of his writing.
Greg Verdino - we met over the blogosphere and have become offline friends. He’s always got an interesting take on the digital media world and we bonded initially over virtual worlds. Did you know… In 2006, he said he loved me.
Seth Godin - has an amazing ability to take complex ideas and distill them down to something that anyone can understand. Certainly very bold and bullish, but constantly challenges my thoughts.
Andrew Chen - the two of us met over the blogosphere and then had dinner at Bucks of Woodside (Silicon Valley) and remained friends since. Always analyzing things in new ways and when Andrew throws out new ideas on his blog (which he should do more often!), I certainly take notice.
Charlie O’Donnell - a friend, former dodgeball teammate, nextNY member, etc… writes some extremely insightful posts on his blog about the world at large and technology. I only wish he was a Yankees fan.
Rock’n'roll.
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Category: Advertising & Marketing
01/31
2008
links for 2008-01-31
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Greg’s thoughts on the cloud and knowledge
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We’re NOT ready for mobile b/c the carriers don’t talk to each other yet.
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Bet you didn’t realize Everyday Health and Glam Media are topping the charts for total unique visitor growth
Category: Links
01/31
2008
New Business Idea: Organizing Information
Google is certainly organizing the world’s information but what about all the information that’s in my notebooks? Yes, my paper notebooks? I’ve been taking business notes for the better part of 12 years and I’m fairly confident that there is some valuable information in these books…. but I don’t really have them organized and since they aren’t digitized, I can’t “search” them.
This is obviously a big problem and since it’s technically non-digital, I’m assuming it is very tough to solve. I can obviously take notes on my laptop/phone/desktop or can rewrite my notes online, but what’s the real solution here? I’m sure I’m not the only person with these issues….
Anyone? Bueller?
01/30
2008
links for 2008-01-30
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One more reason not to obsess about the A list in any media category. Worry instead about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread.
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What happens when something goes terribly wrong onstage at an important, expensive industry conference?
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Good take on the DEMO conference. My take - good PR, but hype dies quick. Build a good product so you don’t have to pay to be infront of panels.
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New services show the trend continues, but are automated site generators the future of domain parking?
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A look at domain name sales
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Advertisers can expect an 84 percent improvement in recall rates for vanity 800 numbers vs. numeric phone numbers shown in visual media (TV, billboard, print) - and a much more significant 9-times higher recall rate..
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Woot’s interesting advertising unit
Category: Links
01/28
2008
links for 2008-01-28
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Michael’s presentation for Domain Fest - short but sweet
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“A lot of little companies are going to be picked up in some real sweet deals,” says Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer. “We’re going to see a lot of activity.”
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Expanding beyond the :30 second spot.
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Target to the blogosphere: you’re irrelevant.
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Real music, great game = lots of fun
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… there went a startup idea of mine. Oh well
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Somehow nobody has seemed to take note of this significant step.
Category: Links
01/27
2008
Trend Alert: Why ‘It’ Bags Are Out
The WSJ weekend edition is one of the last places on earth I expected to come across an article on handbags (an interest of mine). I read the article this morning thinking it was going to be around Fendi’s “B” bag or Prada’s new colors for the spring but actually it was about a macro trend that I’d like to share.
The title of the article, written by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and Rachel Dodes is Why ‘It’ Bags Are Out. Their thesis is that it’s too easy to attain an “It” bag. Traditionally, the popular bags of the season are mid-to-high priced which prices them above mainstream America and makes them aspirational. As the world has become more affluent and purchasing power is increasing, these traditionally out-of-the-reach bags are now accessible to more people, thus, dilluting their positioning as the ‘it’ bags.
History never changes: we want what we cannot have.
The world is becoming flat (if it’s not already) and access to anything is only a few clicks away. All I need is my credit card and I have the purchasing power to go and buy pretty much anything I want in any country of the world. For the world of luxury, this doesn’t bode well. Luxury is all about scarcity and demand.
The trend I’ve been watching is all about the “boutique.” Why buy the trendy bag from Prada when you can go down to the Lower East Side in Manhattan and purchase a hot up and coming designer and wear it with the same stature? Less people have access to these bags and scarcity plays in luxuries favor.
The trendsetters and influencers (market movers) always want to be one step ahead of the curve (if not a step and a half). There are certainly parallels that you can draw from the fashion world to the digital media world including those of social networks.
01/26
2008
links for 2008-01-26
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I’ve been a bear about mobile advertising. However, I could be convinced…
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A peek into DomainFest.
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Defaults on Prosper part of something larger?
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A nice take on the issue that I frequently bring up.
Category: Links
01/25
2008
Swimming in the Deadpool
A byproduct of my fairly bold post about startups and their PR hype was the great conversation that started around the dot com deadpool. I’m not looking to start up another Fucked Company like Pud did back in the day but looking to explore the companies who are failing and find ways to revive them in one of many different capacities.
Before I get into that diatribe, I want to open conversation around private equity and LBO’s that are occuring in the market. I’m not going to pretend to be my friends Roger or Howard with their domain knowledge of the market, but why do private equity cos. believe that they can purchase companies and turn them around? How does a huge conglomerate like KKR believe they can turn around a company any better than someone else? I’m fascinated to watch these large operating funds acquire assets and turn them around… but then again, isn’t this what I’m looking to do with the dead dot coms?
So, back on topic. There has been a lot of money invested into the market by venture capitalists in the past 4-5 years and many of the companies who received early injections of capital are either at a point where they need to raise more, exit, or keep on trucking because they’re cash flow positive and/or profitable. Unfortunately, the amount of cash flow positive/profitable companies in the market are less than the amount of companies who need to raise more money.
What if they do not raise more money? They go into the dot com deadpool. I’m sure there are going to be many companies swimming (so to speak) that may have either good ideas or solid technology that just never got utilized to the extent it could have.
Will Google/MSFT/AAPL come to the rescue? They have about $50 billion dollars in cash that they can acquire either market leaders or starving companies.
I see a huge opportunity in acquiring assets and piecing together a solid company or portfolio of companies. One hesitation though is that to me, technology is an enabler and that if we acquire technology, it’s only a matter of time until someone else creates something better. I don’t ever want to get into a feature vs. feature comparison because it’s a losing battle. So, at the end of the day, what’s the asset you’d be acquiring?
If we make a list of potential assets, we have:
- People
- Technology
- IP (patents, copyright, etc)
- Contracts (biz dev deals, real estate, etc)
- Misc. (anything else I forgot?)
I’m thinking the most value here is within #1, #3 and #4. If these are what are valuable, then why wouldn’t someone else come and acquire them? Why would they make their way to the dead pool?
How could someone play in this market the correct way? Any thoughts?
01/25
2008
links for 2008-01-25
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David going off on TechCrunch. Ouch.
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I don’t mean to be a critic, but lets look at reality
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I’ve been saying it for a long time, but it’s nice to see another article on the space
Category: Links
01/25
2008
Top 10 Web Brands: Online Video
I was reading through some morning newsletters and MediaPost had an article about the Top 10 Web Brands. I copied the chart to this blog, but the article from MediaPost can be found here.
What I find interesting about these numbers is that online video seems to be all of the hype but it’s got one of the least amount of time per person in December 2007 according to Nielsen Online. Maybe numbers will increase because of the Writers Strike?
Numbers can be sliced and diced a million different ways but this was an initial observation.
A video company that I find extremely interesting is Next New Networks (my broher no longer works there) and their hyperdistribution model. They will have an issue with this type of analytics because their videos are all around the web, distributed across many different types of sites.
