As the announcement of the Google-YouTube deal unfolded last week, it was very interesting to follow the responses from various players representing the traditional media establishment. While I won’t rehash them all here, suffice it to say everyone in Hollywood and New York… Read More »
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Robert Young
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As regular readers of GigaOM know, I have written often about social networks as a platform for self-expression, and how such new media shifts the balance of control for production and distribution of content between corporations and consumers. Along with this, I’ve… Read More »
As Dick Parsons, the CEO of Time-Warner recently reflected, Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace “appears to have been a masterstroke”. Well… good to know that he is taking a similar positive view of the deal as me. My positive outlook reflected my high… Read More »
(Editor’s note: Robert Young had actually written this piece early last week, but it didn’t get posted due to an error on our part. Since then, other publications have run stories on the same topic, including CNBC’s James Cramer’s article in New York… Read More »
One of the on-again, off-again hot topics within the blogosphere and the mainstream press is where or not Google will ever build its own desktop operating system. So when Steve Jobs announced that Eric Schmidt was joining the Apple board, I was… Read More »
Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail (read Chris’ book), divides the power law distribution curve into only two segments… the hit-driven head (Big Head) and, obviously, the long tail. What’s missing is actually the most important part… the section in the… Read More »
Last week, I speculated as to why Rupert Murdoch would have a difficult time acquiring YouTube. I also suggested that, with a rumored asking price of $1 billion, NBC Universal was the most likely contender to buy YouTube. But my thoughts were based… Read More »
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Back in April in a piece titled “SocialNets & the Power of the URL”, I wrote: … Like every media revolution in history, when tectonic shifts occur on the production side of content, equally disruptive shifts follow in distribution (or visa versa). What we’re experiencing now… Read More »
Ever since YouTube’s CEO Chad Hurley participated in Herb Allen’s annual Sun Valley media mogulfest, there has been much speculation about who will acquire the young online video phenom. If the chatter in the blogosphere is a reliable indicator, many believe it… Read More »
A few days ago, billionaire Mark Cuban (who owns various entertainment assets, including a film production studio, theatre chain, etc.) posed an open challenge on his blog: … How do you get people out of the house to see your movie without spending a fortune. How… Read More »
A few months ago, a dinner companion informed me that Google was in Hollywood trying to secure exclusive distribution rights to films and TV. Intrigued, I poked around with some folks-in-the-know and, sure enough, Google is wheeling-n-dealing for exclusives. That being the case, I have… Read More »
Rupert Murdoch built his media empire, News Corp, the old-fashioned way… by vertically and horizontally integrating deep and wide into the layers of the media industry (e.g. from production to distribution). But with his acquisition of MySpace, Murdoch has gone down a new path… a… Read More »
By Robert Young In the latest (July) issue of Wired magazine, Rupert Murdoch claims that Google… “…could have bought MySpace three months before we did for half the price. They thought, ‘It’s nothing special. We can do that.’” So that means Google could have acquired MySpace… Read More »
By Robert Young Last week at a conference in New York City, the head of Fox Interactive Media, Ross Levinsohn, told the audience: “More mainstream marketing on MySpace will be kept to the “well-lit” areas of the site, like the Books, Comedy, Film, and Games sections rather… Read More »
By Robert Young Let me expand the title… as Hollywood is increasingly forced to adopt the Internet as a distribution channel, should it be afraid that Google will eventually become the dominant gatekeeper for video?This question, which used to be one of the most pressing in the… Read More »
By Robert Young No one can argue that MySpace has been the “it girl” for the past year. And the fact that she belongs to Rupert Murdoch only seems to have heightened the envy, and gotten everyone’s knickers in a twist. As a result,… Read More »
One of the distinctive qualities of the Web 2.0 companies has been their reliance on community mostly and early adopters. Flickr is a good example. This two-way interaction between the start-up and the users provided the bedrock for a ground breaking service. Google Maps, is another example,… Read More »
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