Internet Radio Will Kill the Government Star
by Gil Rosen
Tuesday April 17th 2007, 4:38 pm
Filed under:
web 2.0,
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web radioIn my humble opinion headlines such as ‘The death of web radio?” or “The last days of internet radio?” are nothing but the opposite of what will turn out to be the actual result. If I had to give a 10 year outlook, my guess is that the government agency behind this current farce (CRB) has more to fear about its long term existence than web radio does. And that is (probably) the very reason it has chosen the weakest rival possible to try to prove there is a reason tax payer money funds their activity.
This was their last mistake. The nail that will seal their coffin. Ten years from now when the whole DRM / Copy Rights / Royalties issues will be solved using a completely private, voluntary and extremely efficient systems - historians will view this current battle as being the one that lead to the turn around in public awareness. Talk about choosing your battles right….not!
If they raised the royalties by so much as a penny, they would have made much more. If they could actually develop a business model that makes sense that would have even contributed something. But greed and power have caused greater empires and ceasars to fall and this will be no exception.
The public has awakened, the battle may seem lost, but its far from it. No government agency or corporate bureaucrat can stop a swell of change like the internet is creating. Not in radio, not in TV broadcast or elsewhere.
What is the end game for this? Kill the Internet radio? In an early stage industry there is so much more money on the supply side. Do us a favor, get your act together and create the opportunity. Wanna talk about making money? Get music actually heard, then tax the royalties from referrals to Amazon and iTunes. That makes so much commercial sense. This is synergy. This is convergence.
If you stick to this greedy pricing structure then you would ultimately:
1. Collect less taxes
2. Drive media outside the territory / industry
3. Get everyone to focus beating the system rather then on working with it
4. Lower incentive to develop technology, services and probably future royalty eco-systems.
Government wrath has never done any good other then get more conscripts in a time of war. Even then if it fights the right/just wars people will volunteer.
In 1610 the establishment didn’t like the fact Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter, using this observation to argue in favor of the sun-centered Copernican theory of the universe against the dominant earth-centered Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theories.
In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo’s opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Ultimately landing Galileo under house arrest.
In todays terms exhadurated royalty increases are the equivalent of putting internet radio under house arrest. Its not day light execution but the target is supposed to fade away.
I got a news flash for the bureaucrats - Father Tommaso Caccini won the battle but lost the war - you will too!
To learn more and and voice your opinion go to www.savenetradio.org
if you are still not convinced, read Tim’s plea (Pandora’s founder)
Gil Rosen
Track with:
Research, Anyone?
by Aner Ravon
We all know this problem. How can we get our hands around the research that is relevant to our business? Research tracking has become impossible, particularly in an Internet start-up where the full time job is already filled with several full time tasks.
Danny Cohen of Gemini decided to grab one bull by the horn. He opened a research library that covers web 2.0 and Venture Capital. In the process he has also spun his eSnips account very cunningly, showing that the potential for sharing is basically infinite given the right environment. The folder can be reached here:
I personally plan to use it.
Aner Ravon
Track with:
Auto-Sexuality, Or Simply Put
by Aner Ravon
Jerking off.
What exactly is the deal with the “Are We in a Bubble” symposium? Is there a point to this conversation?
What started with a soft spoken debate seems to be going religious. It’s not enough to have just a point of view anymore, you need to subscribe to a camp. You either think we are about to burst, or the exact opposite.
It’s not that I don’t have my own point of view, of course. Personally, I think some portions of the tech market are somewhat inflated with gold diggers. I see investments in “over valued” start-ups (can someone explain what “over valued” means exactly? over valued compared to what? to the personal taste of the critique?). I see a lot of activity in what seems to be over saturated niches and in technology that will not mature so fast. Most importantly, I see a lot of desire for short term short cuts.
On the other hand, I see so much exciting stuff out there. So many bright, thinking entrepreneurs and so much venture capital - 2 sides that still, for the most part, simply fail to meet. I see so much need for better communications, information management, medical solutions and programs, fun and entertainment, recreation, financial and equity management, personal accomplishment and so much more.
The debate is not about a bubble but about the road to success - it’s length, it’s mapping, it’s challenges. Long distance runners don’t see a bubble and don’t care for the debate. The term “Bubble” is abusive because it overshadows the industry instead of referring to what it should refer to - the potential for short term speculations.
While this debate is important, it is secondary to the whole scene.
Aner Ravon
Track with:
Ready for Vardi-gras?
by Gil Rosen
A year ago, following TheMarker’s “Com.vention” (a very high profile Internet convention in the local Israeli scene) I wrote a post about my Uncom.ventional thoughts.
I pulled this post out of the closet when I registered this year, to recap my after thoughts. This time I am adding my ‘bet’ in advance. My notes are inline in CAPs - tell me what you think:
• Internet Access - All the conventions I have been to in the past 2 years had wi-fi. In all of them going on line is a nightmare – no connection, slow connection, bad connection – am I missing something or are the organizers cheap?
THE ANSWER IS YES - AND NO CHANGE THIS YEAR.
• Web 2.0 - to be cool or to be fool?
HMMM - STILL A TRICKY ANSWER. YOU DEFINITELY HAVE TO BE MORE SOPHISTICATED THIS YEAR BUT MORE OF A CHANCE TO BE A FOOL
• Truth or Dare? - How can an Ex entrepreneur, now successful VC panelist answer the question “Are we witnessing the emergence of a second bubble” with a straight face? He as well as many other “guru’s” fluked their way into money during the big bubble – what do they know?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - AND THIS TIME I HAVE PROOF (TO BE DISCLOSED AT A LATER DATE)
• Yossi Vardi 1 - Israeli’s go- “Remind me what Yossi Vardi did after ICQ?” The rest of the world - “ICQ is one phenomenal success – respect”
THE ULTIMATE PRIME MINISTERS/ PRESIDENTS PENSION PLAN - WELL PAID LECTURES.
• Yossi Vardi 2 - Having said that….does every dot.com convention in Israel have to turn into a Yossi Vardi “we are not worthy” fest?
YES - ALSO KNOW AS “VARDIGRAS”.
SERIOUSLY THIS TIME - HE IS A TRUE PHENOMENON WHO PROMOTES THE LOCAL INDUSTRY A LOT
• Dress code - Do lucky individuals who have made a huge exit get an automatic ‘pass’ to under dress? Will I do that (not if…when 
).
YES…AND YES
• Babble’bation - Is the internet the mother of all channels or just another channel – I heard “definitely yes, but in certain ways not, when it comes down to it we’ll have to see how it plays out”. Oh’ by the way, it was the same person who gave that answer…hiding it in a cleaver 10 minute babel’bation . Some panelists have no shame.
NO SHAME - PANELIST ARE UNDER AN OBLIGATION TO MAKE 20 SECOND ANSWERS AT LEAST 2 MINUTES LONG (I SAW THEIR CONTRACT )
• The Google Shadow - There was a Panel called – “How Google disrupts and creates businesses” - copy paste the answer from the above. Its like dah…can I get some answers please…
HERE’S A CHANGE - NOW ITS HOW DO OTHERS DISRUPT GOOGLE FROM MAKING TONS OF MONEY. SEE ANER’S GREAT LAST POST
• The Blogsphere is a myth - Amit Shafir - President of AOL’s premium services said that the recent blogging / self reporting trend will come and go – unofficial quote - “the effectiveness of writing and distribution is maximized through centralized portals” (such as AOL). Is he a fool or prophet? BTW – he admitted that he gets much better information by speaking to his 14 year old daughter then he gets by paying tons of $$ to marketing research firms at AOL – with that I won’t argue.
IF SOMEONE TURNS OUT TO BE THIS STUPID THIS TIME - I AM PULLING MY MEGAPHONE OUT AND INTERVENING
• The Long Tail - I was exposed to the “The long tail” theory for the first time – like it! This is the one time I am for the tail that waggles its dog.
MY GUESS IS THAT ITS NOT GOING TO BE MENTIONED AS MUCH. IT WAS A HOT BUZZWORD LAST YEAR. THIS YEAR DRM, UGC AND MOBILE SEARCH ARE.
• ROI - Conventions in general – wasted time or invested time?
NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DAMM MEASURED. WE ALL NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM THE OFFICE TO REGROUP AND SEE EACH OTHER FACE TO FACE. PRICELESS. AND DON’T GIVE ME THIS “OHH NO I LOST 8 HOURS OF EMAILS AND MEETINGS…BOOOHOOOO”
• Real time blogging - What’s the maximum sentence for breaking the blogger’s sacred law #23? – you must report live from any visited convention floor with short and succinct posts loaded with info and smart insights.
WILL PROBABLY NOT DO IT - SEE WIFI EXCUSE ABOVE.
BOTTOM LINE - WE GO, WE MEET, WE ENJOY THEN WE COMPLAIN…AND REGISTER AGAIN THE NEXT YEAR.
SEE YOU THERE.
Gil Rosen
Track with:
Mark Cuban Has It All Wrong
by Aner Ravon
I may be just a tad over my head here, but Mark Cuban is taking a problematic stand in the Viacon - GooTube charade.
In my previous post I wondered about the sense behind this suing. It didn’t take a prophet to predict high satisfaction from the Mark Cuban front and the prophecy indeed came true.
In his You Go Viacom! post Mark Cuban praises the old litigators. That’s no surprise. His criticism of Google’s self righteous de facto piracy has very often gained my sympathy as well.
What I didn’t appreciate is the patronizing rational this time:
it never ceases to amaze and amuse me how little understanding of the content business, or the business world in general that many in the blogosphere have.
Let me provide a simple scenario for you.
HBO. HBO charges a monthly fee to subscribers. If someone can watch an HBO show on Google Video or Youtube, even if its divided into 1,3 or 6 parts and re assembled into a playlist, they have far less incentive to subscribe or retain their subscription(s).
HBO in turn, syndicates those shows to cable networks. As an example, A&E paid a reported $2.2 million dollars PER EPISODE of the Sopranos. If the content is available online, do you think maybe it might reduce the value to A&E and HBO of the Sopranos ? And that’s before we even get to overseas syndication. Youtube and Google Video have a great deal of popularity overseas because in many cases US shows are not as readily available. Online international viewing reduces the international revenue opportunity.
Then of course there are DVD sales. YouTube downloads every video right to your PC. Google Video not only downloads to your PC, it provides the option to convert it into a PDA format including the iPod.
So tell me why it makes good business sense for HBO to let users post the content they sell for a ton of money ?
Now some of those who are so self absorbed in net culture and have no idea how the real world works might think that all of this leads to more viewing and consumption. Maybe it does. Maybe for some shows, like those on broadcast TV, it really does help to have as much promotional video for the show, even to the point of full episodes available both on YouTube and Google Video. There are definitely situations where it could help a show gain viewers and increased sales of DVDs. All of which has nothing to do with whether Viacom or any content provider should let users upload video.
I have a secret for you. ITS EASY FOR END USERS TO UPLOAD video to Youtube and Google Videos. ITS EASIER FOR THE CONTENT OWNER to do the same thing.
Hold it Mr. Cuban! You maybe smart but we aren’t all stupid. I first intended to re-battle the argument (posted a comment), then I saw a much better comment than mine, one that I agree with 100% and that is worth sharing in whole:
Mark, I think you’re a smart guy but I think on this issue your are myopic. Everyone who doesn’t have their head jammed up their portfolio doesn’t care. This is purely an issue for people who are already rich who want to exploit their IP to become richer. Real artists are happy when people see their art.
If you make money on a business model which relies upon withholding your content from the masses your model is over. Maybe there is money to be made by fighting content-sharing for another decade (maybe a lot). In the long run the more you get your content out the better. There are a lot of people out there who can get it for free who will pay for it especially when they know the companies they are dealing with are not the corporate equivalent of retarded whores. I honestly think people should go out of their way to download corporate music rather than buy it because the RIAA is such a dastardly organization.
…
Peace and keep posting
Roland
Loved to have said it that well myself.
Aner Ravon
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Matchmaking Start Ups and Investors - TWS2007
by Aner Ravon
Yaron Orenstein is the editor of the blog the.co.ils. Yaron is organizing an Internet event called TWS2007, with the pure purpose of bringing entrepreneurs with great ideas and investors (VCs and angles) together.
The goal is to Identify and present up to 10 small startups with great technology and strong teams. In addition, it’s an informal networking environment - a “pro bono” event with the sole purpose of promoting the Dot.Com industry in Israel.
All necessary information is given on the TWS2007. The event’s organizers have also launched a group in Linkedin, which aims to gather all Israeli enthusiastic Internet people under one roof.
I’m going, hope to see you there!
Aner Ravon
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Fontip & The power of Shnick-Shnack
by Gil Rosen
Shnick-Shnack is not a word you’ll find in Webster or in Wikipedia but it should get there soon. In one of my recent trips to Europe, someone quoted a big shot CEO for one of the leading mobile operators as saying early in 2000 that “ringtones are shnick-shnacks” or in other words “irrelevant” OR “not significant” ….yada yada yada, 7 years later, they have generated a multi-billion dollar industry.
The context of the conversation was one of humbleness. One should not dismiss what seems like a shnick-shnack service at a wave of hand, with a dismissive ..“…this will never catch on…” attitude. Sometimes people want shnick-shnacks. Sometimes shnick-shnacks let you get personal, express yourself. Fontip is just that kind of thing.
Simply put, Fontip provides what’s called FMS or Font Messaging Service (yes…you ain’t a startup unless you invent a new abbreviation). Using Fontip’s mobile client every mobile user can send colorful text messages combined with jumpy icons and crazy slangons. Its kind of like
incredimail for SMS.
Is this shnick-shnack of what
Incredimail is another perfect example for a shnick-shnack service. Do you really need it?No. Does it solve any technological barrier? No. Is it innovative in a way that can’t be duplicated? No. Yet these are ‘VC type’ questions. People have psychological motivations and drives and look for services that answers such needs regardless of passing the ‘investment benchmark’ checklist.
If Fontip is first to serve the need to personalize sms’s and does it well, there is no reason why it can’t be a huge success. Making communications personal (and cool) has landed Incredimail with a huge install base with around 50 million client downloads!
Will Fontip follow suite? I’m no prophet but there is no reason why they shouldn’t. There is no reason why out of the billions of SMS users there will not be enough ‘personalization’ freaks that will go ahead and down load it.
Competition may come from the handset providers, with them creating built tools or similar services, but with such a wide audience there should be a room for them all.
Is this another 7 billion dollars shnick-shnack market, probably not, but the power of shnick-shnack has surprised before.
Gil Rosen
Track with:
Rock Bands and Start Ups Part II - The Battle
by Aner Ravon
My Buddy Danny Cohen read my Rock Band post and gave me a big compliment by battling back. In his post, Danny highlights an interesting similarity in the area of naming. On the other hand he dismisses the more fundamental point I was trying to make, saying that Rock bands don’t live in the world of “Barriers to Entry” or “Unfair advantage”, and most of them don’t “Fulfill a need”.
This is probably my own subjective point of view, but I argue that rock bands face these exact issues!
Let’s start with barriers to entry. I’ve heard more stories about the long, painful and ugly journeys of rock stars than I have of startupists. Artists, unlike high tech professionals, do not have a decent fallback. Many, Most(!) go through waiting tables and living in misery for long years before they get discovered. If they ever get discovered. After all, do we realize how difficult it is to make a national radio play list? MTV? Billboard Charts? The journey from a local basement in Cleveland to Madison Square Garden is definitely not shorter or easier than the one from seed investment to millions of daily page views.
Moving on to unfair advantage. If you’re a new-be singer with your own unique style, for example, Britney Spears, Byonce and Madonna can copy you in a split second and use their well oiled machine to produce and distribute. All it takes is a decision. As a matter of fact I would argue that Madonna made a career out of “scout and copy” techniques, but that would be a different discussion. When environments are so educated and so competitive, every trick is easily copied and the incumbents have a huge advantage. In that respect a Google / YouTube and Sequoia are not different than Guns n’ Roses and Geffen.
Finally, we get to fulfilling a need. I always considered this term to be slightly abused. Unfortunately it’s very hard to rationalize the exact solution to an exact need because needs have powerful intangible ingredients. Take a look at YouTube for example. What need does it answer exactly? Is it something rational, like free storage or free bandwidth? Or perhaps something much more emotional, such as discovery, creativity or personal recognition?
All these factors didn’t deter Gemini from investing in an interesting company like eSnips and for the right reason. I’m sure there are always rational reasons, but there is one force that is much stronger than everything - the need to regenerate. We love new rock bands and we love new start ups. VCs, like Record labels share a common target - finding the new stars and helping them materialize. That requires predictive judgment and gambling on the right, that’s right, superstars.
Aner Ravon
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Google Apps? Na-ah!
by Aner Ravon
I was really excited when Google announced the rebirth of Apps. My expectations were high due to two main reasons. First of all, it takes a mega brand to do mass market education. I love Zoho, Clarizen and 37Signals, but they are not big enough to drive non-high tech SMEs to the web in masses. Perhaps more importantly, Google have so far managed to apply a “creative chef touch” to online office. GMail, Google Talk, Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs have all displayed freshness that kept the good essence of MS office but went beyond just mimicking; They managed to capture the value of the web over desktop - simplicity, easy collaboration and pure web elements such as free, advertising and blogging.
Then something happened. I really needed a solution for my company. A Solution for simple task and project management and for document sharing. Something not too expensive. Naturally I went online and started with Google Apps. I sadly found out that not only is Google Apps just a new marketing wrap for old stuff, it also has major flaws.
First of all, you need to manipulate your domain DNS to get started. Repeat, manipulate your DNS - CNAME, MX record and other Latin names. Why? Why do I need to touch the CNAME in order to start doing online task management on my domain? Can’t you verify my identity in some other way? It took me an hour just to figure out what to do (and I used to work at this!). Oh, one more little details, it takes about 48 hours for DNS changes to populate the Internet, which means I am still waiting for a verification in order to get started. Hard work and a 48 hour wait! What a contradiction to the whole concept! Do you seriously expect businesses to migrate this way?
During the process something “funny” happened. My partner’s Google calendar (which was registered to his work address, the one I was trying to activate) was deactivated. deactivated! He didn’t understand why he lost access to his calendar all of a sudden. I had to unregister his user at my still not working Google Apps suite. Luckily his calendar ”returned” after about an hour.
I put a stop to it right there. This was clearly half baked. All I needed was effective task management for 15 people in the first place. I checked out Zoho Projects, which seemed like a great web application but an overkill for simple task management. I finally landed on 37Singal’s Basecamp and got started. What a relief! Simple, easy to get started, works. it took me 15 minutes to get started. My colleagues got the hang of it in less than 10 more.
I’m going to stay off Google office for a while. Let me know when it’s usable.
Aner Ravon
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Why Rock Bands and Start Ups are Similar
by Aner Ravon
I was a junior at Forest Hills High School when Guns N Roses released Appetite for Destruction. About 6 months later, Sweet Child O’ Mine hit the radio waves and I was hooked. Back then, as a Metal-head wannabe, I could not afford to admit to liking them without risking outcasting. After all, the proper namedropping included icons such as Metallica (Oey Vey) and Ozzy Osbourne (have mercy). Still, these new guys with this new sound were so charismatic I just had to buy the album. Less than a year later GnR were packing stadiums all over the world and got classified as Bon Jovi’s angry rival. It seemed like a pretty comfortable position to be at and the release of the half baked, mediocre 8 track GnR Lies reinforced that impression. I almost lost interest, but then, three years later, came Use Your illusion I and II and instantly blew me away. Wow! what a masterpiece! It was evident Guns weren’t just a successful rock band, but much more - real superstars, the stuff legends are made off.
I could go on forever about Guns and Roses. To me, they were the best of their era and in many ways still are. If you happen to disagree, just listen once more time to Axl’s unique style in Sweet Child, or to the back to back solos by Slash in November Rain. As a matter of fact, GooTube, sit back and rejoice.
Guns were not a VC production. Slash and Axl had their own bands prior to being hooked up by a mutual agent. They have toured (and trashed) L.A. bars with very little success before Tom Zutaut of Geffen Records signed them to a $75,000 record deal. I am not familiar with Mr. Zutaut, of course, but I doubt he had Axl pitch his go to market plan or Slash prove Guns could out duel Bon Jovi. I don’t think it’s was the resumes that did it either. Axl was 21, Slash was 17, neither of them has done much before to show for. And to top it all, they were a risky play in a risky market. You would agree that a rock-punk-blues-trash band with two savage, ego-maniacs filled with testosterone is not the safest bet on earth. How could that compete with Metallica’s genuine fan base or with Jon Bon Jovi’s million dollar smile?
So why did Geffen sign Guns? Very simple, really. Their outstanding star quality was so obvious it was a crime not to. They were passionate, talented, charismatic, with outstanding presence. They refused to play the game; they drank and smoked in their video clips and they ended concerts prematurely when they didn’t appreciate the crowd. They insisted on (and got) absolute creative freedom, a prerogative which they exploited to the full extent and which resulted with 200 full house concerts and over 70 million albums sold. Oh yeah, Guns were a great exit for Geffen. They were the YouTube comparable.
Start ups and rock bands are more similar than different. While not everyone is Guns and Roses (or YouTube), startupists are star hopefuls hopping between auditions looking to get discovered. There is no recipe that defines a star, you either have it or you don’t, but this doesn’t mean it’s easy to get discovered. You need to be in front of the right people, at the right place and at the right time. You need to work extremely hard, be extremely motivated, be very talented and have quite a bit of luck. You need to rally the crowd behind you - be it A&R execs or investors, fans or users, Rolling Stone or TechCrunch. You need to be true to your own faith and desire but be extremely open to your environment. You need to be ready to perform in front of an empty bar when needed and not give up, but you also need to know when it’s time to sign a talent deal.
Start ups are not about presenting a plan, they are about star quality. You can’t expect to spell out where you want to be in five years and why you will be the one getting there. And if, as a startupist, you feel like you are being overly pushed in that direction, just move over to the next scout. Don’t practice the ”pitching to VCs 101″ manual because it’s useless, it won’t help you. The investors don’t believe in that manual either.
At a certain point, if you have that star quality, the right scout will come along and recognize it, pick you up and hand you the opportunity. While good scouts are as scarce as stars, once in while they all get aligned.
Aner Ravon
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NBA and YouTube Sign Deal! Hallelujah!
by Aner Ravon
The NBA and YouTube announced a deal today, finally making a significant step towards real collaboration between a blockbuster brand and a user generated community.
David Stern gets it. Mixing original content with the pile of semi-legit content will improve the overall result and exposure. And yes, it will push the NBA brand to new markets and demographics it has yet to conquer.
According to the reports, NBA original clips will be aggregated under a dedicated YouTube NBA channel (Pete Cashmore reports about the details). Frankly, I am not going to watch any pre-edited channel, I have other websites and TV channels for that. To me, the most important thing is to find NBA clips will within search results.
Way to go. I wonder what Mark Cuban has to say.
Oh, and is there any chance EUFA will follow? Yeah right…
Aner Ravon
Track with:
Digg and the Little Guy
by Aner Ravon
I am an amateur blogger. I don’t play with SEO tips and tricks, I don’t push my friends to blogroll me, I don’t tail Techcrunch fresh releases for trackbacks. Heck, I never even brushed elbows with Mike Arrington or with Guy Kawasaki!
Sometimes I Digg my own posts. I have also sent a few promotional emails in the past to my own email distribution list, but that’s about it. In short, I am the little guy, sitting comfortably somewhere in the middle of the system.
This doesn’t mean I am not ambitious though. Last week I conducted an experiment. It’s time to share the results.
On Wednesday we hosted Francois Depayras’ Vista Dolorosa at Degardener, (his second post, hopefully of many more to come). Since the post was Digg worthy, I dugg it. I then sent an email to 50 of my closest friends asking them to Digg as well.
The results?
24 of my original recipients Dugg. This generated 17 additional Diggs (and 8 comments) from people I don’t know, all in all stopping at 41 Diggs (you are most welcome, by the way, to continue Digging)
For a while, I was a bit disappointed but then I started seeing the stats. My Google Analytics started climbing rapidly and the number of additional views was totally disproportional to the number of Diggs. At the end of the day, the post generated 500 additional unique viewers and over a 1,000 additional page views! We crossed 1,000 unique viewers and 2,000 page views for the first time in Degardener’s short, one year history. And most importantly - 75 more people subscribed to our RSS feed!
In short, 41 Diggs nearly doubled the daily traffic, each Digg yielding a 20x traffic factor and 2x subscription factor, give or take.
Degardener is almost a year old now. Traffic has been climbing steadily, and while we do not have gazillions of readers, the few hundreds that do read seem pretty loyal. This is a VERY rewarding feeling.
One email generated 75 more regular readers resulting from a page 3 appearance on Digg.
While not overwhelming, Digg is certainly friendly to the little guy!
Aner Ravon
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3GSM Aftermath
by Aner Ravon
I’ve been to enough trade shows by now to know that it is all in the eye of the beholder. A show is good if it was good for you, and 3GSM treated us very well this year. Our service received great feedback, we got covered by El Pais (English translation here) and in addition have generated very high quality business leads. That’s always a very good feeling. I have also managed to tie some loose ends and come full circle with people I lost touch (or good rhythm) with. I guess that’s what a show is essentially about. There were a few share-worthy notes, though:
1. Content is king, again. From low level switch makers, through middleware providers and all the way end user devices - EVERYBODY is betting on the convergence of content. Music, Video, Games, from the PC, from the Internet, it all seems to be rapidly maturing for mobile.
2. Google, Apple, MSN and MySpace did not make an impact at the show. Whether simply not into mobile or just planning to go solo, I question the outcome of this low-key approach. Yahoo! made an exception by pushing a Yahoo Go! booth right at the entry of Hall 7. Great service, by the way, although too “high end” and therefore limited to dedicated Yahoo! fans only.
3. Chauvinism - Are we all dirty old horny men or does someone in LogicaCMG deserve to get his ass kicked? Naked “booth babes” travelling the halls covered with body paint is not just tasteless, it is degrading. And what the hell do naked women have to do with Operator Middleware? I am no conservative, but this was simply bad PR, “gentlemen”!
4. Feminism - The year is 2007 and still, nearly all executives I met were men. Why? When will this finally change already?
5. Consumer - in, mobile productivity - out! I haven’t seen as many new Smartphones or mobile office suits as before. Every handset manufacturer has showcased at least a couple of new media players of different shapes and flavors. We should see a lot of Video and Music phones coming out this year! Good or bad news for Apple?
6. Nightlife - The parties were good this year, the locations were posh, the people were happy, the houses were full. Barcelona being such a beautiful city didn’t hurt either.
7. Connectivity - Can 3GSM finally get good 3G coverage? How does it look when we pitch the value of “not working so good” 3G for crying out loud?
See you next year!
Aner Ravon
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Cartoons and Animation are not Video
by Aner Ravon
Pete Cashmore reports about MyToons, “YouTube for Cartoons”, that has gone beta. Aniboom has been live for some time now and is quite an impressive site.
Which brings about the obvious question - can Cartoon or Animation communities hold their own against YouTube? After all, it’s pretty much the same territory. Theoretically, all YouTube needs to do is add a category and customize the interface a little bit. This, by itself, will deter most VCs on grounds of competitive advantage, or lack thereof.
But the point is different. Animators are not some kids sharing Coca Cola and Mentos videos. They need dedicated, undivided attention, like most of us would demand for our own passion. I haven’t seen MyTunes (I don’t have an invitation yet) but Aniboom definitely speaks to it’s crowd better than a generic site like YouTube.
The same applies, of course, to other horizontal services. Think of search for a minute. Do you really think Google search is good enough for all verticals and niches? Of course not! But would a VC invest in a search start up right now? Hmm….
Aner Ravon
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Conference mania – the tree holocaust!
by Gil Rosen
I am hectically preparing for 3GSM in Barcelona next week. A great venue by all standards. As a presenter, there is a mountain of collateral to prepare - the service overview, the technical white paper, the content provider offering, the mobile operator offering, the stand background, the poster, the this, the that.
So here I am trying to do what most people do before a show and then it strikes me what a waste it all is. We all know but hardly admit that most of these papers will be thrown away or at best looked at very briefly. And what do we do about it? Nothing.
This stupid (sorry, couldn’t find a better word) march of industry clones that exchange papers from one hand to the next and on to the closest waste basket. We often even deliver the paper overseas and back into our offices and then throw it or put it on some shelf to stand there as a silent testimonial “we were there” … but rarely look at it again. The one or two times we do take another look is come preparation time for the next show – then we pick it up and see what interesting ideas we can use for this year’s show – and so the paper parade continues and no-one is shouting that the king has no clothes.
It’s not that the information within is useless, it has some (limited) value. That too is usually filled with empty promises and a stack load of buzzwords. That I could take. But why for heaven’s sake do we need to kill so many trees in the process?
The same info, the same sheets should not leave their original electronic formats. They should stay on websites, PCs, USB drives, you name it – put please do not print it.
We can be very critical of our politicians for not doing enough to save the world BUT WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT in our closed garden? NADA.
I would like to see the first mobile / web / telecom etc. tradeshow pick up the challenge and declare – PRINTABLE MATERIALS ARE BANNED!
Simple and to the point. It will not harm the venue quality, even help it. All these carry-on bags are useless. You want to give me something – tell me where to look it up online, transfer me an electronic file. Anything but paper.
It is we that are destroying the forests in Brazil, not someone else! Its about time we put an end to this killing spree.
Gil Rosen
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MetaCafe On the Right Track
by Aner Ravon
MetaCafe appointed a new CEO today. Erick Hachenburg of Electronic Arts will be replacing Co-Founder Arik Czerniak. This move is the most recent in a series of executive recruits which included new VP of Sales, VP of Marketing and Executive Chairman. A quick look at Mr. Hachenburg’s resume reveals deep experience in online media executive and business management. Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Hachenburg brings along recent and successful experience from the Asian market for which he was responsible at Electronic Arts.
According to Allison Campa, MetaCafe’s VP of Marketing, MetaCafe had 17 million unique visitors in December, an increase from 16 million unique visitors in November. Such volume must be monetizable, period, and no one should know better how to monetize it than an ex-GM Asia from a company that generated $3B from online media last year alone.
I argued before that YouTube has not conquered the market, simply because the market is still at it’s infancy. There’s plenty of room for MetaCafe (and others) to grow. The Asian market may prove more promising in the long run and MetaCafe have already established good presence there.
In online media market share means a little less than absolute traffic. People watch more than one TV station and read more than one newspaper. The same logic applies to the Internet as well. If video advertising takes off, so will both YouTube and MetaCafe regardless of their respective market share. If, on the other hand, video advertising will not live up to the promise then both will need to get creative.
In either case, most of the critiques would happily trade places with MetaCafe. 17 Million unique views per month means huge potential. MetaCafe have built a great end user product and have succeeded in creating that potential. Now it’s time to shift gears and take it to the next level - securing market positions and generating a profit. Right now my impression is that MetaCafe are doing exactly what the doctor has ordered.
Aner Ravon
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Is Angel Club Membership the New Status Symbol?
by Aner Ravon
I got a call from my accountant today. A nice guy, the accountant that is, but generally not one I enjoy getting phone calls from. Personal care taking was never my forte and I always feel way behind the curve. This call was different though. It started with the usual chit chat, then he started inquiring about the new company I have recently joined. Hmm, I thought to myself, he is trying to land us as customers! fair enough, let’s listen!
Sure enough he pitched his “new start up package (very good one, contact me for details) It’s what followed that made it interesting.
“Are you looking for an investment? ” - he went straight to the point - ”We have a new angel club that specializes in early stage start-ups and I’d like to set you up with our members!”
I admit, my accountant was the last person on earth I expected to hear that from, so I naturally went silent for a few seconds in shock. Finally I came back to senses and wondered about whatever drove him into that type of venture. After all, he always reminded me of a pacemaker, not of an entrepreneur. Turns out his customers are the classic type of angel investors and since he has developed intimacy with their finances, what could be more natural than opening new investment paths for them? And who wouldn’t want to belong with an angel club?
I told my partner about it and he wasn’t surprised. He was also approached by his attorney, dentist and plumber. Each one is leveraging their respective intimacy with a wide variety of customers in order to help increase returns and hedge risks. It really got me thinking. I have much more to say about it, but I have some forms to fill out now. My son’s kindergarten teacher is setting up “Bob the Hedger”, a promising new hedge fund, and the deadline for submission is tonight. I’ll keep you posted!
Aner Ravon
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A Must Read Blog for Mobile Professionals
by Aner Ravon
I rad into Roughly Drafted as I was writing the Prada vs. Apple piece. I don’t often dedicate a post to what naturally fits in a blogroll, I always feel like it’s a cheap cheat, but this particular blog is simply worth it.
Roughly drafted is edited by Daniel Eran (we do not know each other). Daniel seems like a Mac fan and the blog is Apple centric, but this doesn’t tell the story. In reality roughly drafted takes a deep and analytical look at the wide landscape of mobile devices, particularly smart-phones. A must read for anyone working in the industry.
A few select pieces:
Apple iPhone vs LG Prada KE850
Smartphones: iPhone and the Big Fat Mobile Industry
Enjoy!
Aner Ravon
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Bubble? say “natural selection, stupid”
by Gil Rosen
Deadpool, fuckedcompany, bubble bubble bubble…say “natural selection, stupid”
That sums up what I have to say about all this deadpool mania. This start up is closing, the other one is cutting down, the third is cutting costs….”oh my god, the burst is imminent”.
My theory is that if everyone is raising money, hiring, launching successful ventures, making money, listing on the NASDAQ, showing double digit CAGR year after year….Then we are in La La land and the end is probably near.
However, when unsuccessful ventures close down, cut costs or simply loose to a better competitors - that is what I call natural selection. Using Wikipedia, it sounds like this:
“the process by which individual organisms [replace with: companies ] with favorable traits [replace with: features/ service / community] are more likely to survive and reproduce [replace with: spin off / grow / make money/get bought by Google ] than those with unfavorable traits [ replace with: bad execution / unlucky].
Natural selection is healthy. It makes sure that players that are there in the long run are the better ones. It makes sure that the ones that have been around make adjustments to the everchanging enviroment and not sell you the same thing over and over.
So say thank you to all those ‘deadpools’, they made the ones who are still around probably a notch better.
Gil Rosen
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wallop? Walleap!
by Gil Rosen
Whether it was their intention or not, the “GUI statement” is a defining theme for the new Microsoft spinout social network.
Every flow, from the registration, navigation to the opening of a new window, is different than what you have been used to. For the first few minutes I felt like I landed in widget land. I am not implying this is bad, it just takes a while to adjust to.
A few notes from my brief first impression:
1. Taking a brave GUI direction has its hitches. I once got totally lost in my lateral browsing trip and since there was no traditional use of the browsers’ back and forward keys it was hard to get oriented. I finally pressed “home” and had to guess my way back to someone else’s page. Suggestion - if you are doing an application that is totally based on flash provide a ‘path memory’ or some other type of ‘bread crumb’ mechanism.
2. Free form windows do provide freedom and personalization options that are beyond the boring drag and drop options offered by Netvibes or other me2.0 website around, but in extreme cases there were so many of them (widgets) open that i got dizzy (or maybe I’m getting old).
3. First time run - an often underestimated process was thought of very well, maybe too well. I got to the stage where I wanted to just start and the website still took me by hand from one point to the next.
4. Eco-system - bought myself a nice background for 0.40 Waller cents. I could see this picking up. If Second Life got people buying virtual real estate for money why not here
5. Advertising free environment - in the words of Kozmo Kramer “Its very refreshing..”
6. Question - what’s the plan for mobile? i think all social networks today need to plan for mobile access and interaction. Mobile is part of our life - it needs to be part of my social network.
My recap is as follows:
I have personally been part of many projects that wanted to take a leap, planned a leap, sketched a leap but eventually just didn’t do it. There are always 1000 reason why not - “people are not used to it”, “the CEO doesn’t like it”, “we don’t want to be first”, “its great but lets do the regular version and leave that for future versions (which are never done), “lets do the funky design in a special tab we’ll call “the lab” and on and on - you name it, the excuse exists.
What I really like about Wallop is the guts! The guts to try something new, the guts do to it all the way and not half assed, the guts to leave advertising out and build a whole eco-system/marketplace before they have critical mass, the guts to create a currency (Wallers), translating to the bottom line of the guts to do what you think rocks and go all the way.
To often these days we see great companies that churn out mediocre products because consensus had to be reached up in the management clouds. This could very much have been the reason for spinning out of Microsoft.
Being bold will not however buy you success, just like a party, the success of a social network is not all about the surroundings…but rather “Who’s in da’house” - The setting is great…lets see who they invite.
kudos to Karl, Sean and the rest of the team, this is a rocking start - good luck!
Gil Rosen
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Predictions 2007 - Part I
by Aner Ravon
It’s that time of the year again, time to start summarizing 2006 and to try and predict 2007.
As you can imagine I have a lot to say about both. I’d like to start this series, however, with predicting my personal top 10:
1. “SEO will kill the Internet Star” and GOOG will drop below 300. GOOG won’t crash and Google will still perform extremely well. Never the less, the online advertising market will become more efficient, educated, competitive and and realistic. The value of a single click will drop and it will show.
2. Facebook will be acquired for much less then a billion dollars. Social networks are here to stay, but they cannot individually be virtually worth that much forever.
3. WiFi phones won’t happen this year. Mobile WiFi is still too difficult to operate, provides too little benefits and does not enjoy operators promotion. Nokia et al will market conceptual WiFi phones but will de-facto utilize them as a learning curve / spring board to WiMax in 2008-9.
4. The rebirth of Super Blogs - Blog consolidation will begin this year under “super blog” brands. I can easily envision the TechCrunch and GigaOM 3rd party program aggregating hundreds of blogs. I believe so can Mike Arrington , Pete Cashmore and Om Malik.
5. Operators will remain the super channel for value added services - off-deck services will not surpass on-deck services, but operators will develop programs for “easy-decking” of services. Google / YouTube / Verizon is a first and good example for why.
6. Video integrated advertising will take off, and not only by YouTube. It makes sense, it’s ready, everybody needs to monetize video and if served correctly users won’t mind.
7. Skype will take a plunge, as Skype will face significant challenges in fighting off uprising competitors who offer free calls using a phone instead of a computer. Phone numbers are still stickier than user names. Check out Jajah and see if you agree.
8. Finally, an iPhone this year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the iPhone will capture a marginal, negligible market of already captive Apple addicts.
9. Video calls will start making an impact. With support from all IM and VOIP desktop services and with 3G gaining critical mass - video calls will come of age in 2007.
10. No change in DRM. This is one prediction I’d love to be wrong about, but I still think Microsoft will push their own with Vista, Apple will do their own as well, Nokia will not take a side and users will continue to not care, rip and share.
Aner Ravon
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Best DRM is no DRM
by Aner Ravon
Is the industry finally starting to wash off DRM? Let’s hope so! DRM cannot EVER work for a few simple reasons:
1. It can’t really stop piracy
2. People find the linkage between track source and MP3 player annoying and unfair.
3. Apple (and Microsoft?) are abusing it to protect iPod (Zune?) sales and not to create a market for music.
The Red Herring reports that iTunes sales have peaked and are now dropping fast. the picture is not better outside iTunes, as noted by the Wall Street Journal:
“Digital track sales held steady at 137 million songs in the second and third quarters of this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That’s a slight drop from the 144 million sold in the first quarter”…
Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne LLC, which tracks peer-to-peer traffic, says more than one billion songs are traded over those networks every month. “It took iTunes several years to reach that particular mile marker,” he notes. “The pirate market — if we considered that a market — would command better than 90% of the online marketplace.”
Nick Carr provides a thorough analysis of the decline, including the following:
“A new survey by Forrester Research provides further evidence that iTunes sales may have peaked… It found that iTunes purchases grew rapidly between April 2004 and January 2006, from 2 transactions to 17 transactions per 1,000 households. This year, however, the trend reversed, and sales actually began to slow. According to Forrester, “the number of monthly transactions declined 58%, while transaction size fell 17%, leading to a 65% overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue.”
This doesn’t stop Apple from sticking to DRM policies that prevent people from playing tracks outside their iPod or iTunes. However Apple’s motivation is not to promote music but to protect iPod sales. With MP3 players and cellphones becoming iPod comparables, Apple has been holding back the music business.
But it can’t work. As if tracks are not copied left and right with DRM. Fighting piracy should first deal with the motivation.
DRM are like government regulations. Healthy markets don’t need them, broken markets vacuum them in. Once their introduced, so is an extra motivation to bypass them. While the intention is to protect from abuse, in reality the regulator usually end up choking the market and protecting the abuser.
Perhaps the key is simply with competition stepping up. EMI/Blue Note records and Yahoo appear to be taking a little step in the right direction. The Jazz subsidiary of EMI has began experimenting with selling unprotected MP3 tracks, releasing singles from Norah Jones’ new album to the general public without digital protection. Unlike tracks sold on iTunes, these tracks can be played anywhere -computer, iPod or Cellphone - and can be copied by and distributed to friends.
A first step en route to realization. The solution is not with DRMing the old economy but with realizing the new economy. ”New” models, such as “all you can eat” subscriptions, value add packages and advertising are simply a much better fit.
Adds David Goldberg, Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo Music:
“For Yahoo, the deal with EMI represents another step in a long-running effort by David Goldberg, the vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music, to persuade recording companies to abandon their insistence on anti-piracy software. Mr. Goldberg publicly floated the proposal at a music industry conference in February, but initially found few takers.
His reasoning: Anti-piracy software on music isn’t helping the industry because the same music is already available without copy protection on CDs and through Internet file-sharing programs. What’s more, many consumers don’t like the limitations that copy protection imposes on how and on which devices they can listen to their music. If DRM benefits anyone, Mr. Goldberg argued, it’s technology companies like Apple, because it makes it trickier for consumers that have made hefty purchases of digital music through iTunes to switch to non-Apple music devices in the future.
“It just isn’t working,” he said. “It’s not solving piracy. It’s not helping consumers: They view it as a tax.”
And Nick Carr notes how the whole market has been choked:
“The Forrester study provides other clues that, while iTunes may help promote iPod sales, it’s been no panacea for music companies or musicians. Rather than being a central source of new music for consumers, iTunes’s business is dominated by occasional impulse purchases”
Need I say more?
Aner Ravon
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Social Media - Dawn of Chaotic Marketing?
by Gil Rosen
For me, as a marketer, the words “Chaotic” and “Marketing” must not be juxtaposed. I like to quote Drew Neisser of Renegade Marketing’s mantra, which is “know thy target audience”. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that spreading your message in a chaotic manner can not be good marketing practice.
However, an article I read today in the NY Times, “Hottest Ad Space in Times Square May Be on Tourists’ Cameras“, suggests the opposite - that we are at the dawn of a Chaotic Marketing era. Let me quickly recap the essence of the article:
The sequence goes like this:1. Times square has become hot property for event marketing (A.K.A - offline marketing)
2. The zillions of tourists that roam Times Square take pictures and videos
3. Vids, pics and ‘experiences’ get blogged, posted on the “Flickrs” and “YouTubes” Etc.
4. Off line Ad/Event exposure is magnified exponentially to the online audience.
As a general “awareness trick”, this sounds like a brilliant way to get the biggest “bang for your buck” for your advertising dollars. You can also acquire “cool” status for doing unconventional stuff…but is it?? Would an advertiser dare insert a TV ad without selecting the placement? Would an advertiser let a random computer program decide that a beer commercial is to be aired in the morning, in between “Days of our Life” and “Seaseme Street”?? Or in short, can marketing be Chaotic and still be successful?. Why do brands accept chaotic placement when it comes to the Internet when this rule does not apply to other mediums? Are the basic physics of marketing being bent by the new reality of social media?
I don’t believe there is a clear answer yet. We are witnessing many marketing experiments with unclear results. So what if a 14 year old person in the UK saw a clip on YouTube of the MasterCard event - is it relevant?. Will the brand be planted in his subconscious only to come of age later? Was this the audience the marketers were expecting? The audience they pitched for during budget time? Does anybody know the identity of the the online video audience in the first place? The answer is NO - NO and NO.
So why do it…is it really that pointless? The answer is NO!
What we are witnessing is the evolution of social media. The brave few ‘freaks of nature’ that defy conventional marketing and do these “senseless act of marketing” are the ones that are helping shape our future. No less. By spending a few random dollars they are participating in the biggest human social experiment called ’social media’, where the audience is not measured by a ‘people meter’, Nielsen or any other skewed system and where the media belong to the individual. After all, how can you explain the fact they are encouraging people to take pictures of their brand despite the risk of having them posted who knows where?
They are not risking but joining. The social media revolution is happening with or without brands. These brave experiments are just attempts to join the ride. In the long run - these will not be the rules… remember…evolution…this is just a phase. Future marketers in the same space, doing similar things will know much better about the effect of their campaigns. They will know exactly who did what, when and how. A whole eco-system of technology comps and services will catch up and be ready to service them.
A case in point is a very interesting start-up called Collactive that is spear-heading the space of social media marketing. If you are a marketer you should check them out. Like them, many other companies will follow and with the help of technology order will be restored to the marketing space.
‘Cause if you ain’t superman, you ain’t breaking no laws of physics!
Gil Rosen
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YouTube Shows Why Technology Must Catch Up with Social
by Aner Ravon
Many people mistakenly think YouTube is only about bloopers. YouTube is also the best music video station in the world right now. Much better than middle-aging MTV.
Check out YouTube’s results for:
Snoop Doggy Dogg - Drop it Like it Hot
Beck - Cellphone’s Dead
Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back
Pearl Jam - Jeremy
The fact you can find every music video you can think of is cool but anticipated. It’s what you can find IN ADDITION that makes it so exciting. Acapella versions, live versions, professional and amateur covers, interviews, bloopers, related videos… WOW.
The problem with YouTube as the new MTV is not copyright issues. I am sure Justin Timberlake is happy with the exposure on YouTube just like Eddy Vedder is or the current indie rising star.
The problem with YouTube is still with the poor quality of video streaming. The basic watching experience still sucks. Simply put. Internet technology has not caught up yet with the social habits.
Aner Ravon
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