(Editor’s Note: The following piece was co-authored with Scott Karp, editor of Publishing 2.0.)

One by one, the big media companies and the Internet giants have started to ante up for the big poker game over the future of the video content business. Google started it all with its acquisition of YouTube. Then GE’s NBC-Universal and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp responded by joining forces to create “NewCo,” which Comcast, the country’s largest cable company, also just joined.

Sumner Redstone’s CBS followed with the announcement of their own independent distribution initiative, called the “CBS Interactive Audience Network.” Standing alongside these big media giants are all the biggest Internet portals, including Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN. What has essentially happened, in a very short period, is that most of the existing Internet and media establishment have lined up on one side of the fence in support of each other, all against GooTube!

Amidst all this reshuffling and realignment, the one player who’s probably in the most interesting position is Redstone. One reason is that Redstone controls not only CBS, but also Viacom/MTV. The other reason is the long-standing media mogul rivalry between him and Rupert Murdoch. This rivalry turned particularly bitter after Murdoch outfoxed Redstone in the bid to buy MySpace nearly two years ago. Given that MySpace has proven to be the next MTV, it’s no secret that Redstone took it all pretty personally.

Fortunately for Redstone, sometimes revenge is a meal best served cold. Since the MySpace deal, the industry-wide realignment around digital video has reshaped the playing field. Although Redstone’s Viacom has also taken the requisite anti-GooTube steps of sending massive take-down notices and going as far as filing a $1 Billion copyright infringement lawsuit, Viacom has yet to fully stand next to its big media brothers on their side of the digital video fence, as his CBS has. And given that Redstone has hedged his bet with CBS, it leaves him open to an intriguing and completely counterintuitive option for Viacom — to jump the fence and form a major strategic alliance with Google instead.

Our modest proposal is that Viacom/MTV should break ranks by striking a broad and comprehensive deal with Google to combine its vast video content libraries with the mass distribution might of YouTube and Google’s Adsense (which is the largest web content syndication network in the world and which Google is gearing up to distribute content alongside ads).

Why Google Needs Viacom There’s a reason why the big media companies are aligning themselves around video distribution and not video content creation — distribution is all that matters. The battle for control of the digital video market is essentially a race to figure out how to efficiently allocate consumer attention, both through search and browsing/discovery.

Google search is the greatest platform for efficient allocation of attention in the history of media. But its text-based algorithms break down for video content. What Google lacks for the first time, in this new video space, is content. Unlike text content, most video content from major media companies does not exist on the open web, and even where it does, it is not easily “crawlable.” This is why Google acquired YouTube — because it needed an alternative way to aggregate and control the content. Without access to a big media company’s full body of content, Google is limited in its ability to learn what works with digital video distribution and monetization. Google is like a voraciously hungry computer — it needs input. That’s why GooTube was making such sweet revenue sharing offers with all of the major media companies. The less content Google has to work with, the less it can optimize — a salient lesson it learned from its dominance of the text-based web.

By partnering with Redstone, Google gains access to MTV, Comedy Central, and other Viacom content that is perfectly suited for experimentation around new distribution and discovery models, which could lead to breakthroughs in how to connect the right people with the right video content — and how to actually make money doing it. Viacom’s brands are strongest with the Digital Generation, who are at the vanguard of new video consumption habits, AND Viacom’s content works exceeding well in the short, humorous, viral “clip” format that has driven the explosive growth of online video.

Making MTV The New MTV The opportunity for Redstone is to respond to the threat of MySpace becoming the new MTV by positioning MTV itself to be the new MTV. To go head-to-head with Murdoch, Redstone has to confront MySpace’s powerful social network and the News Corp/NBC “NewCo” robust distribution partnerships. What better way than to align with YouTube’s social networks and Google’s AdSense distribution network? But how would Google and Viacom make this happen, given the take-downs and the lawsuit? Simple — Viacom should do a complete about-face:

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  14 Comments

When one is asked about Google’s incredible success to date, and what they did so right, the obvious answer will likely involve an explanation of the brilliant technologies that make up PageRank and Adwords. But if one looks under the hood, there’s also a not-so-obvious reason that played an equally critical role in Google’s success: the fact that the web has been predominately comprised of text.

Text affords Google the friendliest technological and legal environments to apply and optimize its superior algorithms. But what happens in a future where video, not text, is the fundamental element of the web? If Google cannot translate and convert the advantages it had in a text-dominated web into a future web of videos, Google is in trouble. Continue reading

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments

As we all learned last week, Google’s efforts to strike content deals with the major media companies, on behalf of their YouTube division, seems to have hit a wall. Viacom pulled all their video clips, NBC accused them of “Mafioso” negotiating tactics, CBS backed off at the 11th hour of deal talks, while Fox and NBC continued to push their vision of launching a big media-backed YouTube competitor.

All such setbacks notwithstanding, it’s still pretty safe to predict that it’s just a matter of time before one of the big media brands caves in and strikes a ground-breaking deal with Google. And maybe not too much longer before Google starts buying programming directly itself.

At the center of such a forthcoming deal will be, of course, money. Specifically, the minimum amount of dollars that Google will guarantee the media company for every year of the deal term. Rumors are that they offered the old media giants as much as $500 million of guaranteed revenues per year, but it wasn’t enough.

Whatever the final guaranteed amount turns out to be, the bottom line is that Google is willing to take a substantial financial risk, upfront, to secure their rights for the distribution of content.

Taking such financial risks is nothing new to Google. In fact, one of the boldest moves they made early in their life was to offer AOL guaranteed revenues, a deal that could easily have bankrupted Google had it not worked out to expectations. Since then, they have used guaranteed minimums as a key weapon in securing every major deal they’ve closed — including the $900 million guarantee they made to MySpace.

But here is where Google’s dealmaking model gets even more interesting. Going back to their efforts with big media companies, Google’s willingness to guarantee substantial revenues further exacerbates the never-ending debate on whether “Google is a friend or foe” to the existing media establishment.

When you look at the big media companies that Google is trying to woo, like CBS, their business model is quite simple. First, they own distribution, which at the end translates into a fixed channel on your TV dial. For instance, I live in Princeton, N.J., so CBS for me is on channel 2. They then buy programming to fill up their channel, like CBS buys episodes of CSI from Jerry Bruckheimer.

Buying programming is the risky part, as CBS must pay the producer in advance often without the comfort of knowing that the program will succeed in attracting a sufficiently large viewing audience. Lastly, CBS will sell advertising against their programming in the hopes that they will recoup their upfront investments in the shows and make a profit.

Given that, let’s now look at what Google is proposing to do. First, Google owns distribution, both at Google.com and now also at YouTube.com. Then, as they negotiate with the big media companies, they are offering to “buy” their programming for an upfront, bankable financial instrument — the guaranteed minimums.

Here, Google is taking a big financial risk as it is very unclear that the guaranteed minimums will prove to be a smart move. And Google will find that out as they sell advertising against the programming they purchased, in the hopes of generating sufficient revenues to cover the guaranteed minimum commitments and make a profit.

The parallels between an existing media company’s business model and the one that Google is pursuing are pretty strikingly similar, aren’t they? And as you click down further, you start to wonder what will stop Google from eventually going directly to the Bruckheimers of the world, cutting out the broadcast networks as middlemen?

In fact, Google is likely to conclude that buying wholesale programming is a sure-fire way to improve margins. After all, in striking a digital video distribution deal with Google, CBS would have handed over the only asset/competency they possessed that would have handcuffed Google: ad sales. But then, Google effectively bought that asset also when they guaranteed minimum revenues.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  11 Comments

Reading through the LA Times, as I do before The Oscars every year, I came across a fantastic Op-Ed written by a respected Hollywood author by the name of Neal Gabler. The opinion piece, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the “barometers of the American psyche”.

And what is culprit? You guessed it… the rise of social media! As Gabler elaborates:

“All of this has been hastened by the fact that there is now an instrument to take advantage of the social stratifications. To the extent that the Internet is a niche machine, dividing its users into tiny, self-defined categories, it is providing a challenge to the movies that not even television did, because the Internet addresses a change in consciousness while television simply addressed a change in delivery of content. Television never questioned the very nature of conventional entertainment. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities — of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fanatics — that seem to obviate the need for the larger community, it plays to another powerful force in modern America and one that also undermines the movies: narcissism. It is certainly no secret that so much of modern media is dedicated to empowering audiences that no longer want to be passive. Already, video games generate more income than movies by centralizing the user and turning him into the protagonist. Popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, in which the user is effectively made into a star and in which content is democratized, get far more hits than movies get audiences. ”

What Gabler calls “narcissism,” I prefer to use the term “digital self expression”. And as I wrote almost a year ago in a piece titled “Social Networks are the New Media”…

“To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the “products” are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, “the people are the message” when it comes to social networks. So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”. In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include “identity production” (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges. For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression. ”

What Gabler and I both seem to be focusing on is the very real possibility that what is truly disrupting Hollywood is not technology per se, but what the technology is enabling the audience to do and how it’s affecting the public’s “consciousness”. In other words, the future of Hollywood may not ultimately rest on issues like how well the studios transition their business models to adapt to digital distribution schemes or how they handle massive copyright infringement.

Instead, what Hollywood might look like in the year 2020 could have more to do with how studios develop new “products”… much like they did with the advent of television (when they created sitcoms, game shows, movies of the week, etc.). But this time, future Hollywood products will probably have to integrate and leverage the virtually unlimited digital resource of self-expression and social media.

At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is the emergence of a new medium with its own art form. And whether Hollywood will remain at the epicenter of future cultural production is the big question. For the first time, Hollywood should be concerned like never before simply by virtue of the fact that, this time, the means of production are now in the hands of the audience itself. What this implies, at the very least, is that the studios will have to increasingly democratize their business model. What does that mean exactly? Go ask the CEO of Veoh.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  17 Comments

There has been much debate about the merits of Viacom’s recent decision to demand the take-down over 100,000 of its copyrighted video clips on YouTube, which included video assets from MTV, Comedy Central, and other Viacom-owned brands. Well, ‘debate’ is probably not an accurate word to use here, as there seems to be an overwhelming consensus within the blogosphere that Viacom did a very dumb thing.

As only he can, Jeff Jarvis eloquently summarizes the general consensus in his latest Guardian column, echoing the prevailing sentiment that Viacom’s move against YouTube represents yet another ill-fated attempt by the old media guard to regain command & control in the ever-elusive new media world.

If you’ve been a regular reader of my writing, you know that I have long been a loud critic of the old media guard whenever any of them have tried (mostly in vain) to maintain the type of control they had become accustomed to pre-web. So while I agree with the overall premise of Jeff’s thesis, as laid out in his column, I have to say that I very much disagree with the conclusion he reached regarding Viacom. In my opinion, Viacom is doing absolutely the right thing and, in fact, they seem to be correcting themselves on many fronts.

Central to my support of Viacom’s recent moves has much to do with something I had written about them back in September of last year, in a piece titled “Murdoch vs. Redstone… Round Two”. The following is an excerpt:

“The first thing Viacom needs to do is try to control where and how the second front of the war is to be fought. What they should not do is to re-fight the first battle by trying to go head-to-head against MySpace (e.g. with one big deal, like acquiring Facebook or Bebo). Instead, they need to move the war to a new front. And in this regard, they need to engage their competitors in an area where they have a clear comparative advantage. This means Viacom needs to bring out the biggest weapon in its arsenal… the vast video libraries archived within MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, SpikeTV, etc.

“Simply put, Viacom has the richest resource of short-form, high-production-quality videos in the media world… exactly the same kind of “video snacks” that are so popular on online video-sharing sites like YouTube. But given that, the real key to success depends on how Viacom goes about unleashing their video assets onto the Internet… In short, Viacom needs to pursue a strategy that causes death by a thousand cuts.”

Firstly, all mentions of MySpace above should be substituted with YouTube, thus making it relevant to the topic at hand. And secondly, let’s review the other announcement that Viacom made on the same day they acted against YouTube, courtesy of this quote from a Reuters story about the news:

You won’t find clips of comedian Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” and MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” on YouTube any more, but Viacom Inc. is laying the groundwork for its videos to be available to hundreds of thousands of other sites… In the next few months, Web users will be able to grab videos from nearly all MTV-owned sites and post them on their own blogs or Web sites, lessening the need to go to YouTube, the top online video service that Google Inc. acquired last year.

To be fair, Jeff does point to this particular move by Viacom in his column. But his analysis of the implications, which he views in terms of a poor alternative to YouTube’s potential promotional value, misses the boat. As MTV’s newly-appointed President of Global Digital Media, Mike Salmi, put it:

“The move is part of a strategy to bring Viacom’s Web sites up to “Web 2.0″ standards,” Salmi said in the Reuters article. “Part of that is allowing people to take our content and embed it and make your own things out of it, whatever they want.”

In my view, the strategic implications of this bold move by Viacom is huge. Opening up their vaults to the masses, for the first time in their history, is a watershed event that should not be underestimated. And its significance should have been highlighted in David Carr’s latest piece about MTV in Monday’s NY Times. If and when MTV makes a comeback, this is the move that will prove the turning point.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  15 Comments

As we all know, one of the biggest stories in 2006 was about a deal that never happened. Despite multiple rumors of buyout offers from various suitors, Facebook rejected them all and decided to stay independent. Now, whether that was a smart decision, or a stupid one, is likely to be one of the big stories of 2007. In either case, the key-determining factor will rest on how well Facebook monetizes this year.

But before we get to the profit and loss statement, allow me to make a few observations about Facebook, and its relative position within the overall social networking space. Firstly, I thought Facebook made a very smart strategic decision last year when they opened up their network beyond the college (dot edu) market. From what I hear, their increased signup and overall traffic numbers are bearing that decision out.

Secondly, their approach to product planning and feature enhancements has always made certain of one thing… for Facebook users, it’s all about communications, and any new feature must enhance that core functionality and not distract from it. Too many competing social networks are moving away from that core, and those that continue to do so will end up suffering when the novelty factor of such “enhancements” inevitably wears off.

Lastly, the loyalty and usage stats (e.g. stickiness) of Facebook remain extraordinarily high, particularly for their original student users. The correlation between the last point and the second should not be lost, and as I often like to say, it’s what makes social media (and its reliance on user-based peer-to-peer production and consumption) somewhat like an Internet version of the hypothetical “perpetual motion machine.”

So given such positives, one might conclude that Facebook did in fact make the right decision not to sell… as momentum and value creation certainly seems to be in their favor. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story… let’s now get to the bad news.

On the surface, the bad news is simple. Like most social networks, Facebook is facing the monetization challenge. All their direct sales efforts and third-party alliances (e.g. deals with Microsoft and IPG) to sell advertising are yielding far less than expectations.

Word on the street, Madison Avenue that is, is that advertisers who have experimented and bought ads on Facebook are universally disappointed with the results. Consequently, getting these big brands to come back to the table and pony up again with significant ad-buys is going to be very difficult. In other words, Facebook is looking at a foggy fiscal future, and needs to make some tough decisions.

It seems its an opportune moment for potential suitors to take another look. Yahoo, how about making that call?

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  44 Comments

A former mentor, and a very smart man, once told me that the greatest invention in this democracy and capitalist system we live in and know as the United States is, of all things, bankruptcy. Yep, bankruptcy… the opportunity to fail.

I mention this because I believe Jeremy Liew, venture capitalist at Lightspeed and subsequently, James Hong of Hotornot.com, posted some “must-read” thoughts and observations on this topic. In fact, I would encourage every entrepreneur to read what Jeremy and James just blogged.

Simply put, we live in a country that encourages dreamers to take risks, and the laws protect those “entrepreneurs” from the potentially excessive consequences of failure. Bankruptcy laws enable risk-takers to protect themselves and start over. There is no other nation on this planet that by its very by-laws fosters such an economic environment. This spirit, the acceptance of failure, while counter-intuitive, is crucial to this country’s enormous success within the world economy.

Consequently, it’s not a coincidence that in the world of technology, having some failures under your belt is actually a badge of honor. It means you’ve been around the block — you’ve made mistakes, ones to learn from — experiences that will make you stronger the next time around. In fact, the incredible and rapid rate of technology innovation almost requires that any entrepreneur worth his or her salt fully embrace failures as a very normal and acceptable part of the journey.

And as Jeremy and James implicitly advise all those dis/interested observers, who are unwisely kicking those who recently failed when they’re down: be warned, if your goal is to succeed, chances are 99 percent that you’ll experience failure along the way. And when the inevitable happens, let’s hope your peers are not as naïve and self-unaware as you’ve been.

It seems weird, I know. The ability for a U.S. entrepreneur to go bankrupt is actually the most important element of this country’s economic success and wealth. It’s a great example of why I love counterintuitive thinking.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  25 Comments

The title of this piece is a quote from Nancy Robinson, VP & Consumer Strategist at Iconoculture (from this recent CNET article). Now that’s a great quote! It’s right up there with something a very close friend/mentor used to say in the early ‘90s… “let’s put the Me back in Media!” (That was the late John Evans, former right-hand exec to Rupert Murdoch.)

I consider the remote control, first commercialized in 1956, one of the greatest inventions in electronics. It’s so ridiculously simple, yet that little device was powerful enough to dramatically impact the evolution of the TV & cable industries. Think about it… without the remote control, there would be no interface to manage hundreds of channels, no serendipitous discovery of new shows enabled by channel-surfing during commercial breaks, no watching two or three shows simultaneously by clicking back and forth between channels.

Without the remote control, watching TV would not be the relaxing, lazy experience we’ve all come to enjoy… it would, instead, be a stressful and annoying experience, having to get up and down, up and down, over and over again.

The titled quote is very apt now, as the emerging interface for video is now the mouse and keyboard (see YouTube). Being “remote” gives way to being in full, interactive control. Content “programming” shifts away from the Hollywood elite to the masses. The critical point here is that we now get to decide what we want to consume, and increasingly do so in a format, and from a menu, that’s not pre-selected by the old media gatekeepers. So just as the adoption of the remote control ultimately fragmented the TV industry, the mouse & keyboard will fragment it even further. In fact, any media that gets digitized and put online is experiencing hyper-fragmentation.

Just look at music and publishing. Via the Internet, these industries are feeling the “remote control” effect. A great example is the rapid obsolescence of “albums” in the music industry, giving way to individual tracks. The same goes for newspapers and magazines, where the value of the curated/edited package gives way to people wanting specific articles that are only relevant to them.

All that said, let’s be careful when we interpret what all that means. For instance, it doesn’t mean that the need/demand for quality content will decrease. For the old media guard, that’s good news. But it does mean that the need/demand for “packaging” and programming, old-fashion style, will rapidly decline. This is where control in the hands of users will have a diametrically opposite, and negative, effect on the control previously held by the traditional gatekeepers. Bundles get unbundled… user control causes hyper-fragmentation.

At the end of the day, the strategic implications for such change towards user control ultimately ends up being an issue of business models. Media industries that built their businesses based on the model of branded packages are now going the way of the horse-and-buggy. With consumers increasingly in control, it’s not only the markets that are fragmenting. It’s also the business models themselves that are being sliced and diced. Monetization techniques must adjust to this new environment as the economic rules are being redefined.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  6 Comments

Lately, I’ve been thinking through an oft-discussed scenario involving MySpace… one that I have good reason to believe is now highly likely in 2007. What if MySpace suddenly decided to put up tollbooths and all the players within the MySpace third-party ecosystem had to start paying the mothership access fees?

Without doubt, a strategic shift in policy by MySpace along such lines could cause significant ripples, if not outright panic, among many of those vested in the MySpace economy.

While I can’t reveal the “deep throat” reasons for my speculation, let’s discuss some of the more publicly-known factors that could influence such of move:

• With the departure of Ross Levinsohn as the President of Fox Interactive Media (“FIM”), the MySpace economy lost its best internal corporate champion and defender of the Web 2.0 “open & share” ethos. While the cofounders of MySpace, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, are also net-savvy and remain ostensibly in charge of the social network, they are no match when squaring off against Peter Chernin (COO of News Corp) and Peter Levinsohn (the new head of FIM). The loss of Ross was a tremendous setback to FIM, and it looks like the pain will be felt by hundreds of entrepreneurs as well.
• Unconcerned by the virtues of operating under Web 2.0 principles, the aforementioned two Peters of the old media guard live by a different ethos: money and control. And as MySpace continues its quest for improved monetization, their objective to deliver a “clean” environment to major advertisers is increasingly aligning with their vigilant efforts to improve safety & security.
• Given such internal momentum, Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam has identified its existing level of openness to its third-party ecosystem as the number one threat to its unifying objectives.The problem here, of course, is the everlasting delicate balance between openness and control. The question is, which is the optimal path to continued growth and sustained profitability? In my view, it would be very premature and self-destructive for MySpace to close up now as social networking monetization schemes are in their infancy and the major innovations are yet to come. Put another way, while extracting rents from its third-party ecosystem may prove financially beneficial in the short term, such a strategic shift may sow the seeds of its destruction in the long run.
• As I’m told, one of the key drivers for MySpace to start charging their ecosystem has to do with YouTube. Specifically, FIM wants to monetize all those YouTube videos that are embedded within MySpace pages. Now that YouTube is owned by Google, internal forecasts are estimating that MySpace can add as much as an additional $500 million in revenues to the existing agreement they have with Google (which is guaranteed at $900 million of revenues over 15 quarters). That’s a lot of cash, and who can blame them for wanting to secure that income stream? But if MySpace starts charging YouTube, do they have to set up tollbooths for everyone else? They’re pounding their heads against the wall on this one.These are vexing issues and I empathize with the management of FIM and MySpace.
• And let’s be clear, erecting tollbooths is not the same as closing up behind walls. It’s a monetization strategy that could conceivably add much to the bottom line — something Murdoch insists of all his companies. At the end of the day, there’s only one thing that we can be certain of: the current relationship between MySpace and YouTube will not continue as is. MySpace will either move to monetize the relationship, or it will cut YouTube off. In either case, it will set a new policy for the third-party ecosystem.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  20 Comments

The most important market challenge for social networks in 2007 can be summarized in three words: monetization, monetization, and monetization.

Regardless of whether social networks will splinter into niches and verticals (e.g. sports, pets, moms, teenage girls, etc.), regardless of whether social networks adopt interoperability (e.g. OpenID), regardless of whether individual profile pages morph into widgetized and personalized start-pages, regardless of whether 2007 will be the year that social networking goes mobile… all such market development activities will prove secondary to a much more fundamental issue.

And that issue is whether social networks can innovate on the revenue generation side of its business model sufficiently to pull its average ad rates out of “junk” status into “premium” rate levels (e.g. from today’s $0.50 CPMs into something closer to $10 CPMs).

Towards such ends, there are four critical success factors that any innovation in monetization scheme for social networks must adhere to:

The bottom line of all this for anyone running a social network already, or if you are in the process of building a new one… make sure that everything you do is designed to maximize monetization, as the difference between success and failure will rest on this metric. For instance, if you are creating a niche social network, do so in order to fetch high CPMs. If you are going to widgetize profiles, make sure it results in an enhanced path to monetization. 2005 and 2006 were years that proved that social networks were not a passing fad, but superior monetization is what will prove key for social networks in 2007. Consequently, it’s likely that M&A activity will also accrue towards those who are able to crack this nut.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  34 Comments

Now that Yahoo has announced its reorg, many are wondering and speculating as to what the ailing Internet giant might do in terms of M&A. Put another way, will Yahoo rely on acquisitions to fix its problems and plug up its holes? Or will it depend on its internal resources, now that they have streamlined for improved execution, to strengthen its strategic weaknesses. Given the company’s weak stock price, itís much more likely that they will opt for the latter path if at all possible.

Take Facebook as an example. Rumors of on-again, off-again acquisition talks notwithstanding, Yahoo must take steps to gain a leadership position in social networking. As the Internet’s largest community and communications company, the fact that Yahoo is not a leader in social networking represents one of the biggest missed opportunities in our industry’s history.

Just as Viacom’s Tom Freston got fired by Sumner Redstone for losing the MySpace deal to Rupert Murdoch, someone’s head should roll at Yahoo for the fact that they have virtually no meaningful presence in social networking.

But what to do? Should Yahoo take the highly dilutive plunge and buy Facebook for $1 Billion-plus? In my opinion, no, they should not — there is an alternative that is better, and a lot cheaper.

Yahoo should immediately clone Facebook. But as not Facebook is today; rather, as Facebook was before they opened up. In other words, Yahoo should develop and launch a social network designed exclusively for college and high school students. This market opportunity, which is the exact same opportunity that Facebook exploited several years ago, is now available once again. It’s a low-hanging fruit in the social networking space, one that would be very easy for Yahoo to pluck off. Cloning the original Facebook would also shore up one of Yahoo’s most glaring weaknesses it would bring back the 14-22 student demo.

For a company like Yahoo, social networking is not a market that they should buy into. Yes, Murdoch needed to, being a traditional media company with no real Internet competency. Even Google’s acquisition of YouTube made sense from the perspective of core competency since Google is notoriously bad when it comes to anything “social.”

But for Yahoo, social media is as natural a market as they come. It already possesses everything it needs to lead and succeed in that space. But they got lost during the last few years. Bringing in someone like Lloyd Braun to head up their Media Group was indicative of how misguided they were. Don’t get me wrong.

Braun is a tremendous TV executive. After all, he’s the one at ABC that green-lighted “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives”. But inside Yahoo, when the big opportunity in the market was clearly social media, it was inevitable that someone like Braun would himself become lost and desperate.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  36 Comments

Like a lot of you, I spent some time this past weekend reading Brad Garlinghouse’s “Peanut Butter Manisfesto” to fellow Yahoo executives… also reading all the reactions in and around the blogosphere. Not to make light of a serious situation, but I have to agree with Nick Denton when he dubs Garlinghouse as Silicon Valley’s own “Jerry Maguire”.

While Garlinghouse’s memo was full of common sense and practical suggestions, I didn’t feel that it addressed the root of the problem at Yahoo. In my view, Yahoo’s most significant dilemma is a high-level strategic one… where the question is: Do we need to, and want to, be the king of search? Put another way… is Yahoo in direct competition with Google? The world certainly perceives it as such.

To further analyze this strategic question, let’s zoom out even more. At its core, search is a content aggregation and distribution platform. So to some extent, if your goal is to be the king of search, it is synonymous with wanting to be the king of aggregation and distribution for all the world’s content (hence, Google’s mission statement). But I say “to some extent” because search may not prove to be the optimal platform for all media types. Clearly, search has proven its efficacy with text and documents, but it still has a long way to go when it comes to pictures, videos, and audio.

Given that, one must qualify the desire to be the leading content aggregation and distribution platform with the specific media type/area one wants to dominate. For instance, as video becomes the next wave of media type to conquer, it remains very unclear whether search is the best path to aggregation and distribution. In fact, if YouTube (and most other video-sharing sites) are leading indicators, one can conclude that community is a far more effective filter for precision and recall when it comes to non-text media types. Which would actually prove tremendously beneficial to Yahoo… and therein lies the opportunity (one that doesn’t go head-to-head against Google’s strongest assets).

If you strip away all the layers that make up Yahoo, what you’ll find is the Internet’s largest communications and community company. And being so represents a comparative advantage versus Google… in all the areas where communications and community matter most. The challenge is to turn that comparative advantage into a competitive advantage by developing the vision and strategies that hit Google where they are most vulnerable. Put simply, Yahoo needs to leverage its strengths in communications and community to become the dominant content aggregation and distribution platform for all non-text media.

Ironically, the senior executive in charge of communications and community at Yahoo is none other than Brad Garlinghouse. As such, he is the one who needs to be held accountable for making sure that his operating/business units provide the necessary resources for overall strategic execution. Perhaps that’s what he has been trying to do internally but ended up hitting a wall. Whatever the case may be, it is Garlinghouse’s domain that needs to be opened up and become accessible by all groups/divisions within Yahoo.

And I’m not trying to be a Monday-morning quarterback here… in fact, 14 months ago I wrote a piece about the strategic implications and significance of community, and how companies like Yahoo would increasingly gain their competitive edge from the consumers themselves (now that they are also producers and developers). As such, it’s critical to realize that the priorities of “marketing” have been inversed… whereas the primary function of marketing used to be to broadcast a product’s benefit to consumers, the priority of marketing now should be to be a proxy for consumer control, because it is the consumers who will lead your company to success. Just look at the recent successes of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc. These companies let their users create their competitive advantages… the win did not come from central product planning. That said, I was wrong back then when I stated that Yahoo seems to be doing it right… they failed to execute.

Google injects every initiative it can with its core search DNA. Yahoo must do the same with its communications and community DNA. And on that front, my advice is to first dismantle the ill-conceived Yahoo Media Group and reorganize its interface to traditional media and Hollywood with its core social media assets. They made a very big and expensive mistake by bringing in a traditional broadcast TV executive to run this group… one that AOL seems destined to repeat with their recent executive shuffle. The rules of broadcast media are antithetical to the factors that drive social media, and the thing that I will agree with Brad on is that such insights and visions must be something that is intuitive and native for the leadership at the top.

Photo via Flickr by Football Squares

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  19 Comments

Following our piece yesterday about the continued growth of online advertising, let me add to Om’s practical perspective with my own take on where I believe the opportunity lies for those who are set on capturing some of those future ad dollars. What I’m about to say should be very obvious to most by now, but I believe it bears repeating.

Putting aside the issue of whether or not online ad spending will consistently grow unabated for the next 20 years, it’s safe to say that the total pie will be much bigger 10 to 20 years from now. That said, I firmly believe it is equally reasonable to assume that a big chunk, if not a majority, of future ad spending will go into online ad models & formats that do not yet exist. The big reason for this, in my mind, is due to the emergence of social media… and the fact that social media is not mass media.

As I have already written much about, social media is a new medium in its own right. As such, successful commercial exploitation of this new medium requires the development of new business/advertising models. This has been true for every other new medium that has been adopted at large scale throughout history. Yet, unlike mass media before it, social media introduces the very unique element of the previously passive audience becoming both producers and distributors of media. From a marketing perspective, this means that the people themselves will necessarily have to become an integral part of the brand communication strategies and processes.

Now, couple what I just mentioned with the prospect that the majority of future ad spending growth will come from traditional brand advertisers that, up until now, dominated traditional media budgets (e.g. TV & cable, radio, newspapers & magazines, etc.). But here’s the real quandary… while it’s easy to reallocate budgets, these brand advertisers face a problem because they cannot simply transport their traditional ad models (optimized for mass media) to the new world of social media. Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that even today’s dominant interactive ad platforms, like Google’s highly efficient AdWords/AdSense system, or Yahoo’s display ads, do not extend naturally into the social media space.

What this all boils down to is a growing and substantial market need for new ad models and platforms. Granted, there’s a good chance that the dominant players of today, like Google and Yahoo, will end up being the ones to develop the new models. But I’m an optimist, in the entrepreneurial sense… I believe it’s far more likely that new players will develop such innovative platforms. After all, 5 years ago, Google wasn’t even a player in online advertising.

Put another way… 10 years from now, my bet is that a substantial and material share of the huge online advertising pie will be captured by players we do not know of today. The real challenge, as famed author and management guru Geoffrey Moore points out, is to develop marketing solutions that are highly scalable for social media. I agree, and I also agree that such solutions are not in the marketplace today. But while Moore doubts there will ever be scalable solutions for social media, I on the other hand believe it’s a problem that actually has several fundamental solutions… many of which will start coming to market in 2007.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  20 Comments

Traditional media companies are in a persistent state of confusion when it comes to Google. The question that keeps these media executives up at night is… is Google a friend or a foe? If recent conversations I’ve had with such executives are any indication, Google’s recent deals and initiatives (e.g. acquiring YouTube, selling newspaper and radio ads, etc.) have only served to heighten their frustrations to an all-time high.

From where I sit, the answer to this vexing question lies in one’s ability to foresee what Google is planning from a product development perspective. If you read through all the announcements and analyses about their recent deals and initiatives, it becomes clear that a common vision unites them all. Simply put, Google is building what is essentially an operating system (“OS”) for advertising… one that will work across all media.

Just like Microsoft’s Windows (or any other OS) manages all the hardware and software resources of a computer, Google’s Ad/OS will similarly manage all the critical components of an ad campaign, regardless of media type. But instead of controlling and allocating memory, Google’s Ad/OS will allocate ad budgets… instead of prioritizing system requests, controlling input & output devices, Google’s Ad/OS will enable ad inventory buying & placement… instead of facilitating networks and managing files, Google’s Ad/OS will optimize media buying across the spectrum & manage creative placement.

Google’s Ad/OS will be used to manage and buy ads at many of the top new media publishers like MySpace, YouTube, AOL, Ask, and Google itself, of course, along with hundreds of thousands of blogs. It will also be used to buy ads in the NY Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and all sorts of local papers owned by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy… not to mention radio stations all over the country that are owned by Clear Channel and other radio conglomerates. And if Google executes on its plan, soon all the major broadcast TV and cable networks will join in to make their ad inventory available via Google’s Ad/OS.

So sit back and imagine that for a minute… the development of an operating system for advertising where anyone (from mom-n-pop stores to Fortune 1000 brands) can sit at their computers and slice, dice, & puree all their ad buys across web sites, newspapers & magazines, radio, and TV. Over $500 billion is spent every year advertising on these traditional media markets and Google is using its superior technological advantage to become a media-agnostic advertising platform.

Now, taking it from the top… if you were an executive at a traditional media company, would you consider Google a friend or a foe? As one media executive said to me the other day… “as long as they don’t develop their own content, we think we’re safe”. Hmmm, interesting. But it would behoove him and his colleagues to remember that Google’s core competency is to use technology in a manner that devalues and deflates traditional industries by extracting inefficiencies in existing processes. And the long-term strategic implications of this “Google effect” is much more disruptive than simple market realignment… rather, it’s an issue of rendering old core (human) competencies obsolete and replacing them with new ones reliant on automated, scalable technologies (much like what Wal-Mart did to retailing and what Craigslist is in the process of doing to classifieds). For instance, the only way for traditional media companies to leverage the core competencies they have today in order to compete with Google’s Ad/OS, in the long run, is to start breeding ad salespeople who will have the expertise and capability to sell across all media platforms. Sure, that’s feasible… when pigs can fly.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  30 Comments

I’ve been playing with Vox… the new social network-enabled blogging platform recently launched by Six Apart (also owners of TypePad, Moveable Type, and LiveJournal). Although I don’t do new product/service reviews, I will say that Vox is very well done and the new service could prove itself to be a vortex within a scattered social media marketplace.

I’m probably also one of the very few that felt Facebook made the absolute right decision when they opened up its social network. Their timing, in my opinion, could not have been better, particularly in terms of competitive positioning against MySpace. With the move, there is no doubt in my mind that Facebook has placed itself on a new growth curve… one that will benefit from the churn of members from competitors as well as newbies to social networks.

Having said that, let me qualify my thesis a bit. As I wrote in my last post, Facebook has a low “narcissism” ratio, relative to more “Hollywood-oriented” social media services… and it’s very important that it stay that way as it pulls back its velvet rope to the masses. But doing so puts Facebook on the same evolutionary path with Six Apart… at the conceptual level, both companies are ultimately aimed at becoming personalized portal platforms (what I’ve previously referred to as “consoles for consumer control“).

As such, it is increasingly likely that Facebook and Six Apart, given their new initiatives, will be competing for the same customers (both users and advertisers). And if I were running one or the other, I would immediately run a strategic/financial analysis to look at the costs and benefits of a merger. But I would do so with one very specific objective in mind… to see if a combination could flip into an IPO.

An IPO of a merged Six Apart/Facebook would represent the market’s first pure-play social media listing. Judging from the view of Wall Street analysts, and the stock market reaction, to previous deals like Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace and Google’s pending acquisition of YouTube (in addition to the street’s punishing of Viacom and Yahoo! for being too complacent), it’s pretty safe to say that a qualified pure-play social media IPO could easily become the next Nasdaq darling.

Of course, the combined company would need to be profitable (which I’m guessing they would be) and it would have to demonstrate meaningful revenues… I would guess the combined entity is currently generating over $150 million annually. That said, I would only go IPO if the underwriters priced the company at a bubble-like valuation of at least $2 billion. ;-)

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  13 Comments

When Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his new invention, the telephone, for the first time publicly in 1876, he didn’t announce the birth of a new age of ubiquitous electronic person-to-person communications. Nope. Instead, to the oohs and aahs of those gathered around him at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Bell proclaimed the advent of a new entertainment medium designed to deliver music, drama, and news to the people. In other words, he described what we all now know as “radio”, not the “telephone”… oops.

I’m reminded of this little bit of historical trivia every time I watch social media evolve… …. reading all the articles, hearing from the hundreds of new social media entrepreneurs who write me every day, etc. As social media advances into a powerful new medium for self-expression and communications, the true utility and purpose of social networking sites like MySpace and social video-sharing sites like YouTube seem to be in constant flux. Many go as far as to predict that social media will be a passing fad. Yet in all this confusion about what social media will, or will not, ultimately become when it grows up, two distinct paradigms seem to be dominating the majority of views (and strategic plans) today.

The first is social media as the new Hollywood. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say a “farm league” to Hollywood. There’s plenty of evidence to support this scenario: (a) MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a media mogul; (b) YouTube (and soon-to-be-parent Google) are doing all they can to partner with the established media players; (c) Hollywood talent agencies are dedicating resources to social media to scout for new talent and deals; (d) established Internet players like Yahoo Media Group and new startups like Bix are launching new platforms and contests aimed at becoming the web version of “American Idol”… the list goes on.

The bottom line here is that there are a group of people who view social media platforms as a new opportunity and path to Hollywood fame.

The second model has less to do with the bright lights of Hollywood and more to do with everyday life, and using social media as a digital appendage of oneself. Here, social media fills the basic human desire to express ones’ creativity and individuality, and to use self-expression in order to enhance and extend their relationships and communications with others.

Of all the large social media platforms out there today, Facebook is probably the purest in this sense… peruse the profiles in Facebook and one of the first things you’ll notice is the low “narcissism” ratio vs. other more fame-driven social networks. Consequently, for whole new generation of Internet natives, checking your Facebook profile several times a day is more important than any other form of communications.

Now, let’s go back to Bell for a minute. While his initial vision for the telephone-as-radio turned out be the wrong one, it’s critical to realize that the invention of the radio could not have occurred without the prior invention of the telephone. Put simply, the telephone and radio run along the same continuum of physics. It’s also equally important to understand that the same fundamental science can spawn two completely separate industries. But the most important lesson of all is that Bell didn’t try to create the “radiophone”.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is because I’m starting to see a potentially dangerous trend emerging… one that’s quite reminiscent of “everybody wants to be a portal” wave of the late ‘90s. As I get pitched by hundreds of new social media ventures, there seems to be an increasing disconnect between what they say is their vision vs. the platforms that are actually being built.

It rings especially true when I hear from people deep within the entertainment community about how they intend to embrace and leverage social media to their benefit. To boil it down, nearly every platform demo and spec that I see now are nearly identical in terms of functionality and feature set. Most alarming though is that too many ventures seem to have an overwhelming desire to do it all by building a “radiophone”, as opposed to focusing on one or the other. After all, even Bell quickly realized his success would be found by focusing on building the telephone, and letting others build the radio.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, there are also a lot of parallels that can be drawn, when building an online community, to building towns, cities, or even a nation. While the difference between, say Hollywood and Pittsburgh, from the perspective of urban planning, political organization, economic policy development, law enforcement, etc. might seem similar at a zoomed-out level, the distinguishing characteristics and services of each city get amplified as one zooms in to the culture of the population and the various neighborhoods that make up each city.

Hollywood is very different from Pittsburgh, and the factors that drive the health and prosperity are highly specific to each. This is an obvious statement… yet such obviousness does not seem to be translating to many of the social media ventures that I’m seeing. Put another way, the biggest danger for any social media venture today, whether they be at the startup stage or even for those that already have a lot of traction, is to try to be all things to all people.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

iPhone’s Curvy Competition & Devious Droids TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy "; BackPack Shelf for Mac — Adjustable Gear Storage jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; Live Music Comes to iTunes TheAppleBlog – by Liam Cassidy ";

Posted by Robert Young on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  16 Comments