My startup develops services that take advantage the internet and mobile. It is a powerful combination.
Watch Eric Schmidt’s take on the magic of mobile and the cloud (via Techcrunch).
October 29, 2009
October 28, 2009
CBS on Web Video
Peter Kafka interviews soon to be leaving CBS digital boss Quincy Smith who sees Hulu as a problem,
Peter Kafka: Since you’re going to be advising CBS’s Web video strategy, why don’t you lay out, for the record, where things stand?
The other side of the Web, the side that is most thought of by many journalists, is the threat, of an IP-deliverer of video. And how you turn that threat into an opportunity.
And so from that perspective, as you know, we didn’t go ahead and say, “OK, we’re going to lock down and stream, with all of our other peers in broadcast, and come up with the same rules, and embed and right-click this and go away.” I’ve never had a beef with Hulu. Hulu’s always worked as a great service. That’s part of the problem.
As a network, we need to make sure that our content is being seen where the dollars matter. And right now that’s on air. Opportunities like TV Everywhere — we’re not putting all of our eggs in that basket, though we are big advocates of it — are ones where you can actually take and expand and extend the television market online, so it doesn’t matter what screen you watch CSI on: What matters is that you watched it, it counts and you saw the ads.
But until that happens, it’s crazy to just stream the shows for zero economics. When in fact you can make a lot more money doing things that are additive and complimentary to the rest of the CBS line. That’s where CBS interactive comes in now.
Kafka: But TV viewers are showing an increasing interest in watch their programs on the Web — whether its from legal services like the Web or illegal torrents and pirate sites. Don’t you need to reach them where they are?
Now, if you really look at those numbers, what they’ll say is [online and offline video are] both growing, right? We’re having the best year ever as America’s largest broadcast network. and I think that 99.9 percent of that — this is the Quote I’ve never been able to get in there — is that’s [because] of the great content that we have. There’s some infinitesimal basis point that’s relevant [to CBS ratings because] we are making sure that when people watch it, they’re more inclined to watch it on television. For now.
Once that solution moves, once those economics move – whether that’s more ads, [higher] cpms, more ad buyers… You and I can say all day long, “We’re sold out on web video. That’s going really well. It’s sold out.” Well, no kidding it’s sold out. It’s a $700 million market. The television market is $120 billion. And of that $700 million, half of those [ad buyers] are spending 90 percent of their time doing Google keywords, not buying online video.
The key is, how do you turn television buyers into video buyers? And that’s where a solution like TV Everywhere comes into play.
And by the way, looking at [Hulu CEO Jason] Kilar’s comments the other day, in Colorado [at an industry convention], he sees that too. He’s more sophisticated on this stuff than most anybody. From the perspective of, he understands that’s where the big dollars are. And so he probably went at it as, “I’m going to aggregate all the people first, so hopefully things like TV everywhere come to us.” From our perspective at CBS, we’ve got to go to them.
I don’t hate Hulu. Hulu’s world class video viewing. What I don’t understand is, why license all that content to something that works that well, that seamlessly, yet — without the economic model around it?
October 26, 2009
October 25, 2009
Have blogs gone mainstream?
Fred Wilson thinks so.
I was reading Technorati’s State Of The Blogosphere report yesterday. It has a lot of data on bloggers but not so much on readers. And I’m more curious about readers than bloggers.
I believe that blog reading has gone completely mainstream based largely on discussions I’ve had with friends who are not in the tech business (one advantage of living and working in NYC) and based on talking to my kids and their friends. I really don’t know anyone who doesn’t read blogs these days.
These are big numbers. Blogs are being read by hundreds of millions of people worldwide every month and the growth numbers for companies like Tumblr and Disqus (both of which are Union Square Ventures portfolio companies) are very encouraging.
I think it is clear from a quick review of these numbers that blog reading is a mainstream and a mass medium. And the companies that serve this market, both bloggers and blog readers, are in a very interesting position.
The thesis that blogs were a new form of publishing and self expression is playing out nicely and we are pleased with the progress of our companies and the market as a whole. And I think we are not anywhere near the end game.
It depends upon the definition of blogging. If you include facebook and twitter status updates then I would say blogging has gone mainstream. If not, I don’t think it has yet, though I think it is on its way.
October 24, 2009
Sean Parker Is Dead Wrong
Sean Parker, an entrepreneur turned VC, gave a presentation at the Web2.0 summit where he says the future is with network services such as facebook and twitter not with information services such as google. His premise is that connect people is more valuable than collectind data.
I agree with him on the value of network services, but he is dead wrong on google. Google has a one of the most powerful network service. It’s called adwords/adsense. It is a network of advertisers and consumers/content. It has proven to be THE most valuable network on the web. Period.
Here is his presentation:
October 23, 2009
Narayana Murthy turns a VC
via techcrunch:
Great news for Indian entrepreneurs!
Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, better known as N. R. Narayana Murthy and one of the seven founders of Infosys Technologies
– a giant of a consulting and IT services company based in India with over 100,000 employees and offices around the globe – is turning to “the dark side” after selling a bundle of company shares in order to set up a venture capital firm.
To set up the fund, the man reportedly sold 800,000 shares, or 0.13% of the company, its total value converting to $38.7 million, more or less.
According to many reports of Indian business and technology publications, Murthy aims to invest mainly in ‘brilliant’ Indian entrepreneurs who found startups that operate in the areas of healthcare, education and nutrition. Considering his background as a technology entrepreneur, I imagine some of the investments will be in technology or Internet companies as well, however. Infosys in a statement said overseas investments will also be consider on a “case-to-case basis”.
This is the magic behind silicon valley. Successful entrepreneurs fund and mentor other budding entrepreneurs. India needs more of its successful and well healed entrepreneurs doing this.
October 22, 2009
Lala scores big
Lala pulled off of a double coup with its deals to power Google and Facebook. It is not easy to manuever your way through the trecherous world of music labels, search engines and social networks come away with deals. Congrats to Lala. BW has the behind the scenes look at the deals.
Earlier today, I spoke with Lala Media founder Bill Nguyen as he stood in the lobby of Warner Music’s headquarters in New York. The always animated Nguyen was more animated than usual—and for good reason. He’d just finished a day when the world learned that his little-known company was going to be the engine behind new digital music offerings from Net behemoths Google and Facebook. He wasn’t just excited about the magnitude of the possibilties, but by the fact that none of the news was supposed to happen so soon. “It was all totally unplanned and unexpected,” he said.
Here’s what happened. He’d gone to New York for an entirely different reason: to show music label executives and reporters a version of Lala’s music service designed as an app for Apple’s App Store. But then news broke, first by TechCrunch, that Google planned to use Lala’s service as a back-end infrastructure for a new music search feature to enhance its overall search offering. Suddenly, Nguyen, who declined to comment on the Google rumors, was no-commenting his way through interviews as reporters asked for details.
Then things got wilder, when Facebook suddenly pushed up its announcement that it, too, planned to unveil a Lala-based music plan. Rather than stick to its plan to begin a limited roll-out to a small percentage of Facebook users later this week, suddenly the social networking giant confirmed its overall plan. “All of a sudden, it was like ‘we were launching right now,’” says Nguyen.
Mind you, he’s not complaining. He thinks traffic from Facebook alone could increase the number of songs doled out from Lala’s servers by an order of magnitude above the 5 million or so songs it currently delivers each month. While he won’t comfirm the Google deal, it’s pretty clear it’s coming. Google has sent out invitations to announce an Oct. 28 event at a historic Hollywood concert hall to announce a music-related offering. Judging from the invitation, Lala is a part of the news.
All of this represents a quick culmination of many months of deal-making by Nguyen and Lala CEO Geoff Ralston, a former Yahoo executive. Their pitch has been that there needed to be a return to basic economics when it comes to music. Rather than using music to sell hardware (a la Apple) or to sell advertisements (a la iMeem, MySpace, Spotify and others), they argued that consumers would buy music if it was easy and affordable to do.
Lala’s model is to let consumers on the Web listen to any of the eight million songs in its database for free, but just once. After that, they could opt to buy a streamed version of the song, dubbed a Websong, for $.10. Or, if they wanted to listen when they werent online, they could pay $.99 for a regular MP3 download.
But since the masses weren’t beating a door to Lala’s servers, the company needed to land a Google or Facebook to achieve critical mass. Now, it has both. And both companies seem to have inventive plans that could well have mass appeal. Facebook plans to let people buy songs (either those Websongs or the pricer MP3s) for friends, from its virtual gift store. Nguyen envisions a time when Facebook users will habitually buy friends or family members a song on their birthday, on holidays or on other occasions. “Why not give people something they’d actually want, rather than a virtual carnation,” he laughs. And he sees the phenomenon getting viral, as song purchases show up on millions of Facebook status updates. “Once someone gives you a song, all your other friends will know. And some of them will say, ‘oh, of course Id like to send you a song for your birthday, too.’”
Neither Lala or Google are confirming their plan. But if the many press accounts are correct, it is similarly intriguing. Once a Googler enters a query in the Google search bar, they’ll get a link that lets them actually listen to the song, as opposed to just getting the usual collection of lyrics sites, Wikipedia entries and the like. (Not all of these songs will be doled up via Lala. According to reports, some will come via iLike and possibly other digital music services.) Here are screenshots, courtesy of TechCrunch.
Whats it mean for Lala? Nguyen says the company will get a majority of revenue from sales made through Facebook. He says its similar to the cut app developers get from Apple, which is 70% of revenues. Facebook declined to confirm this, saying that it doesnt disclose financial terms of its gift offers.
Regardless of what the terms of the deal with Google turn out to be, Lala is likely to grow far more rapidly than in the past. And Nguyen doesn’t sound concerned about Lala’s ability to make a profit on the larger revenue base. “We’ve always been a company that invested heavily in the engineering, but we’ve never lost money on the music itself.”
Google should have had a play in music long time ago. Baidu anyone! Facebook botched iLike deal and let Myspace get it. Lala is the big winner here. Don’t forget about iLike which is now part of Myspace and has a similar deal with Google.
Newsday goes to paid model
Another news site bites the bullet. Newsday moves to subscriber model.
Beginning Wednesday, most of Newsday.com content will only be available to subscribers of Optimum Online, Newsday, or those willing to pay for it.
Newsday described the move as one that would create a “pioneering Web model,” combining the newspaper’s newsgathering services with Cablevision’s electronic distribution capabilities. About 75 percent of Long Island households are Newsday home delivery or Cablevision online customers or both, according to Newsday. Optimum Online customers total 2.5 million in the New York area, the paper said.
“We are excited about this model because in addition to a unique ability to immediately reach about 75 percent of Long Island households, we believe the hyper-local approach is right for Long Island,” said Debby Krenek, Newsday managing editor and senior vice president/digital.
The new strategy comes as newspapers have been scrambling to replace the advertising-based model after years of steep revenue decline. Charging viewers for online content has been debated in the newspaper industry in the past few years.
Jack Myers of Jack Myers Media Business Report, a Manhattan-based economic research firm, said, “In the long term, it’s a zero-sum game. Basically what you are doing is you are shutting off younger audiences from getting access and becoming fans of your content, so it strikes me as a pretty short-term protective measure that will be a great case study for the industry.”
However, John Morton, head of the Morton Research Inc., a Silver Spring, Md.-based media consulting firm, said the current model of free online content is not a “rational model.”
“Despite the false premise that has been floating around for the last 19 years, that information on the Internet wants to be free, [it] is just not true,” Morton said. “People have always been willing to pay for information they have felt was useful to them.”
Clearly they do not have enough audience to support a ad based model. Unfortunately subscription is a difficult model to make it work. Users are only willing pay for certain type of information. There are plenty of other free news sources for people to go to. Good luck to Newsday!
October 21, 2009
Google enters the music industry
Google seems to be taking a page out of Apple’s playbook. Yesterday there were reports that google will be selling their own android powered mobile phones. Today there is news that Google will be offering its own music service in partnership with iLike and Lala.
Google will partner with iLike and LaLa for their new music service, we’ve learned. And the announcement date is Wednesday, October 28, 2009.
iLike was recently acquired by MySpace, so the new service may involve them as well.
From information we’ve gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today.
Users will also be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download, we’ve confirmed.
Both iLike and LaLa provided limited streaming services today. LaLa lets users stream a song once, then a user either has to pay or only get a 30 second clip. iLike has some full streaming, some 30 second clips. MySpace Music has full streaming rights from all four major labels.
I think it is a bit too late to offer a me too sevice like this.