Darren Herman

As I write this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks on 24th and 6th Ave and have been trying to collect my digital media thoughts over the past few weeks.  Apologies up front as they are eclectic.

•    Techmeme needs to launch an iPhone app as this would be my news source, displacing NY Times and WSJ.  I’d gladly pay for this.

•    I downloaded and played Zynga Poker on my iPhone 3G this weekend and loved it.  BTW, I am more of a fan of blackjack than Poker but the thought of social gaming was fantastic.  Nicely executed, Zynga.

•    The more screens there are in our society, the more they need to be cleaned.  I’ve spoken at length about starting an iPhone wipes company, but haven’t been able to get a supply source with enough margin to make it worthwhile.  My iPhone is filthy and I’m sure yours is too.  How do you clean yours?

•    I used to run the darrenSalon’s – they have been dead for the past year or so.  I’m thinking of doing a day up at a remote location about an hour north of the city.  We would focus on a specific topic – would this be of interest?

•    The way we learn and play instruments are changing.  Nintendo Wii is going to revolutionize the music space.  Yes, Rockband exists on Xbox 360 and PS3, but kids start with Wii prior to graduating to the more “intense” systems.  I’m curious to see how this is going to play out.

•    My friend Noelle took a job over at Indaba Music.  Congrats Noelle!

•    Boxee is really interesting for many reasons, but the first of which is getting digital content onto my living room TV.  I can watch everything from Fast Lane Daily to TED Talks, Hulu to Netflix.  Genius.  I want to see Boxee expand to the desktop as well in terms of a content distribution system inside of widgets.  Think PointCast model.  I’d be very interested in talking further about this.

•    Litty and I have been trading emails about fantasy sports and how much they are currently underserved in the market.  ESPN, CBS Sportsline and Yahoo! haven’t changed the underlying structure of their games in the past five or so years and they are very, very mainstream.  There is huge market opportunity for both casual (citizen sports/SI) and hardcore fantasy games.  Again, I’d be very interested in this space to talk further.  BTW, there are some very smart and intelligent people talking about this as well in small pockets.  Time to unite these pockets.

•     Historically, I’ve been very public about the following, “I don’t wake up in the morning and want to create content.”  Well, that thesis has died and I was totally wrong (more on that in future blog posts).  Lots of people both young and old are creating videos (every Macbook sold now has video capabilities) and tweeting.  Yes, it’s a small subset of the population but it’s only going to grow larger.

•    Obama’s thoughts about instituting high speed Internet for everyone will only grow the digital media space.  If there is national broadband, private upstart network operators will do well because people won’t want to use national broadband for everything (government stalking, etc).

•    I’ve been thinking about the investment philosophy of shrinking a current industry for creating efficiencies for the future growth.  Think Napster instead of retail music sales.  One could argue that Napster helped the environment (less people driving to the store to purchase music).  I just came up with that sentence – terrible, I know.

•    I’m super excited to the technologies that my son gravitates towards in the future.  Don’t think I’m not going to be watching and reporting – open source his technology usage for the betterment of investing and learning.  Some of my investor friends very closely align themselves with technologies that their children and their peer group adopt.

•    I am excited about the transparent presidency, what Obama is doing for the White House is exciting and I’m loving his use of digital media.  Can he keep this up while he is in office?  I sure hope so.  He will have the American public in his hands, even through tough times if he uses open communication (video, twitter, etc).  The only issue may be the technology infrastructure he so chooses to use and the melting of those servers due to such a large following.

•    We’ve put our son, David, online fairly often, whether it be on HermanWeb, Facebook, Twitter, or this blog.  Some of our friends are totally against this and have shielded their kids from the digital world including not posting any photos.   I’m curious to see how this plays out for the future, I summize that there will always be people who keep things in private, but it seems as if our society is opening up rather quickly.

•    Agencies better take down the silo of online/offline or they will die a rather quick death.  Digital is an infrastructure and will permeate each media channel (television, print, OOH, radio, and of course, online) and it’s up to the agency to understand how to adapt and plan with it.  Witnessing battles over digital OOH and video budgets… ah, the early days of an industry.

•    Vision and innovation is the appetizer, but adoption is the main course.  In a recession, cut down your appetizers and be fiscally responsible.  This doesn’t mean to not be innovative, but make sure that the delta for innovation and adoption is not longer than the amount of dollars you have in the bank account.  I’ve written about this here.

•    The fun parts of digital are outside of the browser.  For future investments, I’m looking outside of the typical browser, as that is where the large growth lies.  Video games, mobile, television, OOH, radio, even print are all digital…. New mediums will emerge in the next 5-10 years that I can’t even fathom right now.

•    If I were to place a bet, video phones are coming in the next 3 years… to the iPhone.  This is purely a bet and there are some technical limitations, but makes a lot of sense.

•    Google will land its first large media client (100% Google media) within the next 2 years.  Meaning, a client will bypass an agency and go straight to Google for media.

•    Optimization isn’t just for the ad campaign, but companies should be optimized just as much.  It’s not always the ad campaign that needs to change: product, in-store, website, etc.