VentureInside

Goodbye for Now

The time comes for me to say goodbye, but I hope to return again someday.  My stay in the blogworld was short and incredibly gratifying.  I thank you all for reading and welcoming my thoughts, opinions, reviews and rambles (hopefully only occasionally).  In the next couple weeks, I will be joining Interactive Corp’s (IAC) Mergers & Acquisitions group.  Please stay in touch!  I will hopefully have the opportunity to connect with many of you directly to discuss emerging business ideas and models or just to shoot the entrepreneurial breeze.  Possibly, one of my Battery colleagues who is equally excited about digital media may pick up where I left off lest the url sit latent for too long! 

You are with me in my RSS feeds…

Kara

Google Says: I Want My MTV!

What can I say, kudos to Google. For a while it became blogging du jour to take a stab at Google’s video strategy. Some complained the features and functions did not live up to expectations- “the product is delayed…. The content is limited… The player is not working…My account won't authenticate..” Back in January, Andrew Goodman from Traffick.com made the analogy  that Google’s foray into video was akin to a billionaire buying a sports team, a trophy business that serves vanity more than financial profit. Many small businesses praised Google’s aimless “bring your random video here” strategy with their tongue in cheek. This strategy had the nice side effect of providing free bandwidth and hosting to serve up these businesses’ video for free.

And yet as Google’s strategy starts to take shape publicly, it seems to me they are approaching the market with a smart staged approach and a great launch content partner. First, Google’s features are improving, with page layout that makes better use of the page space and adding instream rating and permalinks (similar to YouTube). Second, Google entered the market incrementally, gradually bringing on popular features and new content. Google carefully navigated the copyright waters, brining on clips like The White House Correspondent’s Speech from CSPAN and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Trailer from Disney.  Google is increasingly moving users to the video section of their site.  Media companies also seem to trust Google to syndicate copyrighted content over the search giant's powerful network.

SiliconBeat: Kara Nortman, as Willie Loman venture capitalist

Thanks to Matt Marshall for giving me the opportunity to guest post on Siliconbeat earlier this week.  Matt has been a must read blog on my RSS feed for some time!

Link: SiliconBeat: Kara Nortman, as Willie Loman venture capitalist.

My Space Firsthand

It is easy to read and write about Myspace. It actually takes 5 seconds to type in the url and run a search for your favorite not so mainstream band. It takes 10 seconds to locate the Vanity Fair article touting Baywatch's Hobie’s 2^nd coming as the man about Myspace (e.g., Hobie is finding action and a profession online). And it takes a good 30 seconds to register your profile. But it takes a sibling or a close friend who lives in their space to really understand the power of the community.

After watching my brother Greg, who is a respectable lawyer by day and aspiring rock star by night, scour Myspace one weekend, I was truly struck by the inordinate amount of time he spent on the site. When I asked Greg what it is he likes about the site, he replied “It’s like a car accident… I don’t want to look, but I cannot help it.” The real reason is he is generating fans for his band in advance of his upcoming self-produced album. Greg is part of a new generation of social networking “CPA” (Cost Per Acquisition) marketers, he just does not know it. In this case, the “C” is his time. For Greg, he does not really see the C as C because he loves his band and his music and so it seems his new friends do as well.

Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary

I came across an article in the NYTimes over the weekend that took on the question of whether the best businesses are evolutionary or revolutionary.

In answering is this age old debate, I would argue that the answer lies in semantics or the definition of revolutionary. Is revolutionary a disruptive technology, a unique business model change or a significantly better user experience? Or is it the best two out of three with a side topping of luck? 

“Disruptive” is defined ambiguously at best. To some it is an order of magnitude improvement around speeds and feeds. To others it is wrapping new forms of connectivity around an existing offering/use case or enabling new end user behavior. As an example, think of a chip that enables a significantly longer battery life (e.g., AnalogicTech) vs. a physical swap meet moving online (e.g, Ebay) vs. an application that allows you to move large rich media files cheaply over the Internet (e.g.,  Bittorrent or Red Swoosh).

Music on the Brain

Labels like Warner Music Group and EMI are reinventing themselves as broad-based agents and marketers. Ironically, the digital download era which seemed to be disenfranchising the record label, has created so much business model confusion, bands are looking to the labels for a more holistic media plan. Those labels willing to think outside the box- with regard to revenue streams and revenue share- will prosper.

EMI Music recently teamed up with The Firm to launch a new record label that not only manages musicians careers, but also produces, distributes and markets their music. The Firm looks to split revenue with artists equitably, rather than sign small royalty agreements.  

These developments are interesting because they highlight the way in which the music business has changed:

Co-Managing the Dead's Soul

Six months after the Dead came under attack for taking down free digital copies of their tracks online (What a Long Strange DRM Trip), the company has decided to join forces with a real label. The band signed a licensing agreement with Rhino Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. The deal is a multiple-rights deal in which Rhino will help the Dead manage their business and brand broadly, including touring, publishing and merchandising.

I guess Deadhead stickers really do belong on Cadillacs. The band has clearly been thinking about concepts such as paid digital distribution and DRM and views the business burdens in this hybrid digital/analog age as too great to manage directly.

Techdirt: Can Someone Explain Word Of Mouth Marketing To Hollywood?

Link: Techdirt: Can Someone Explain Word Of Mouth Marketing To Hollywood?.

Can Someone Explain Word Of Mouth Marketing To Hollywood? from the might-help dept

Seriously. Is it really that hard for the folks in Hollywood to understand the benefit of word of mouth marketing? After all, this is the same crew of people who know how to blame bad word of mouth when it makes a bad movie tank. You'd think they would recognize the other side of the coin as well. Instead, they do what they always do and send out the lawyers.

This post hits nail on the head.  Premium content producers (and advertisers) are only starting to get the power of word of mouth marketing, a topic of a recent post.  Many are missing the New York skyline for the 30 story building.  Hollywood has much to gain by allowing the user-generated community to flourish.

Online Video is Hot VC Sector | AlwaysOn

Thanks for the shout out Andy! 
Link: Online Video is Hot VC Sector | AlwaysOn.

Online Video is Hot VC Sector  June 24, 2006 The world of online video is definitely more than a blip on the radar screen of many of the top venture capital firms. We caught up with Kara Nortman of the top-tier Boston/Menlo Park-based venture capital firm, Battery Ventures.

NBC to run TV promos on YouTube

This could also read YouTube sees the fork and takes it! 

When user generated video content comes up in conversation, the question I am most often asked is "What is going to happen with YouTube?" Are the IP/copyright holders goign to sue the video aggregators once they start to monetize content or will they demand royalties?  Will the large media companies allow a trickle of premium content to flow illegially on YouTube as promotion for the more mainstream channels or will they do their best to shut down any illegal copyrighted material?  Is YouTube the next Napster (the first iteration of the company)?

Link: NBC to run TV promos on YouTube.

By Andrew Wallenstein

NBC and YouTube are going from foes to friends.

The network is announcing a deal today that will see select clips of NBC series embedded on the popular viral-video site beginning this week, sources said.

The deal is quite a reversal from the well-publicized conflict that broke out between the companies in February, when peacock parent company NBC Universal ordered YouTube to remove hundreds of copyright-violating clips. A skit from "Saturday Night Live" titled "Lazy Sunday" triggered millions of streams for YouTube, becoming its most popular clip for a time.