I was going to post this on WorldMojo.com (our Political, Military and Economics blog). But since it involves technology, I thought it might make sense here.
As such, this is not intended as a political debate (though if you want it to become one, I am not going to stop it, frankly).
Some people will say that George Bush stole the elections in 2000 thanks to his brother Jeb in Florida.
Others will suggest that Ohio became 2004’s version of Florida.
I am not going to argue that these two statements are true, I am just saying that there is enough “out there” to suggest that something fishy went on in both elections.
All signs indicate that tomorrow, the Democrats will win the House of Representatives and might even pull off the Senate.
- If the Democrats win the House and lose the Senate, no one is going to really scream conspiracy.
- If the Democrats win both, clearly the Republicans will scream and shout but most people will say that Iraq was George W. Bush - and the Republicans undoing.
- But say the Democrats win neither the House nor the Senate despite the fact that all signs indicate they should win at least the former and maybe even the latter.
What then?
Of course in the day of paper votes, you could always go back if need be.
But when electronic, paperless voting is the standard and the head of Diebold promised the state of Ohio for the President [George Bush] before the 2004 Elections, shouldn’t the greatest democracy in the world have a real, serious audit system in place.
And in today’s era… why not have an online, open source system in place where potentially, if “the people” suspect that an election is rigged or not representative, they could “log in” and “unlock” their votes.
In other words, ceteris paribus, votes remain confidential and private. But in the event that the people suspect some wrong-doing, should they - and not the government and those in power - have the right to unveil their votes for all to see, if at least not one by one, then at least as a whole?
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WatchMojo NewsletterIt’s a shame that YouTube was actually launched last year, otherwise this award would have meant something.
Jokes aside, the venerable Time magazine (who Time recently decided not to invest in at the expense of SI and CNN, mind you) came out and honored the company founded by Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen as the invention of the year and small details like it not being invented this year notwithstanding, it’s a much-deserved award (and reward) for a company that caught the Web off guard and stole the limelight away from Google (of course we know who got the last laugh when it was acquired by Google… hmm, actually, exactly who did?).
Of course, I’m not sure that the fickle folks on the blogosphere would consider YouTube to be an “invention”… and while the same crowd on blogs helped propel YouTube to the stratosphere, the truth is that the proverbial judges are not those on blogs, but rather, the people in the larger mainstream world who became familiar with online video thanks to YouTube.
For that, despite all of the knocks, YouTube deserves all of the credit in the world.
It’s worth noting of course that YouTube is in fact what Flickr was to photos, and if Yahoo! had not been shellshocked into not tweaking Flickr (after initially encouraging Flickr users to sign in through Yahoo’s sign in page and not Flickr and putting up with Flickr’s users’ revolt), Yahoo! would have “probably” encouraged Flickr to morph into a video sharing site.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. But speaking of hindsight, it is simply unbelievable that YouTube was not really an invention at all (I am giving them props in that statement).
It borrowed from:
- Tagging and media sharing: Flickr and Del.ico.us (both bought by Yahoo!)
- Online video: Metacafe, others.
- Consumer generated media: pick ‘em
But, at least, YouTube invented the video playing technology. Hold on, someone is handing me a note.
Oh, that’s right. The video technology is actually Macromedia’s flash.
They did do one thing that was “inventive”: syndication. Though I’m certainly not the first one who called that.
All right, if Time magazine had honored YouTube in its online edition, it could always go back and change the honor from best invention to best mashup… but too bad the folks at Time decided not to invest in Time and the magazine is on newsstands already.
Which, I guess means that few people will notice.
Sometimes, people need to get into a room and sort out their differences:
In search, says analyst Greg Sterling of researcher Sterling Market Intelligence, it is not too late for Yahoo to catch up. “Local advertising is a huge, $100 billion market, and advertisers want multiple options,” he says (USAToday.com).
Really?
Borrell Associates estimates that local companies will spend $1 billion on search this year, more than double from last year(TheStreet).
Who’s lying?
According to an article in the November 13, 2006 issue of Business Week:
TV: $430 million
Free-standing inserts: $3 million
Newspapers: $44 million
Radio: $25 million
Internet: $35 million
Other: $37 million
Total: $574 million
Food for thought: if advertising on the Web will in fact represent 25% of all media buys in 2010, the Web’s component will be over $130 million, and that assumes the total remains constant.
I might be offending the Web gods by saying this, but if I hear one more mention of “long tail” I might gag.
But…
TV broadcasts once disappeared into the ether. Now Critical Mention is helping to give them a long tail: With Critical Mention, Sean Morgan has a Web-based service called CriticalTV that lets corporate and government customers monitor thousands of hours of news broadcasts from the nation’s 50 largest television markets as they occur.
Read more.
I’ve had a lot of folks - a lot of readers, a couple of investor types and a handful of business writers/journalists - ask me why I keep mentioning that the Web is not experiencing a bubble. I happen to mention that here or there and I figure it’s time to explain this a bit more in depth:
As a general disclaimer, I tell them right off the bat that of course, it’s in my personal and professional interest for there NOT to be a bubble. But I also tell them that if I thought we were in a bubble, I’d be the first one to point it out, I’d also make necesssary adjustments to our business and my investment portfolio; mainly, I’d be ringing alarm bells on this website. Like I say: if I tell you it’s raining it’s cause I am wet, and not because I am selling umbrellas.
But the reason why I do not think we’re in a dot com bubble is mainly that unlike in the 1999-2000 era, the money fueling advertising is not coming from VC’s investment but from all facets of the economy: individuals are turning to online advertising, small & medium-sized business are shifting dollars and global agencies and Fortune 500 advertisers are starting to look online as a better way to market their products and services.
At the macro level, I remind people that we spend 25% of our time online yet online budgets are about 5% of total advertising budgets. This is simply a mammoth-sized disparity that will be exploited and capitalized on by entrepreneurs in one way or another.
At the micro level, take Google for example (I know, what kind of “micro” example is Google, it is practically the bellwhether of online advertising…). Google will not pop tomorrow (though it could on any day go down by 10-25% cause it is indeed “priced to perfection,” for the simple reason that while it gets 99.9% of its revenue from online advertising in general and from paid ads in particular, its client base includes individuals and small & medium sized businesses. Large companies use Google but still not as much as they will down the road. We know that in America, 67% of the economy is driven by individuals, 33% from corporations. If you apply that metric to Google’s business, individuals will always look to Google (and search engines broadly and online advertising in general) as a better way to market products and services.
With paid ads in general, there are so many advertisers who do not even hit their daily budgets because others are bidding more. My point is not “go out and buy Google” and short TV, radio and newspaper companies, my point is “sure, Google might go down cause it’s the priciest stock,” but it won’t go down 99% like many dot coms did from their turn of the century high.
In fact, the best argument why we are not in a bubble is that the dot com space - as jubilant and euphoric as it seems these days - is nowhere near the highs that it was.
One major area of concern is indeed the housing slowdown. But, my gut says that partially because real estate and stocks are negatively correlated, a real estate downturn (slight, not a major recession in real estate prices) will be an overall positive for stock prices. Furthermore, the reduced speculative environment will encourage more people to invest in stocks than real estate. Of course, if there is a perfect storm (I’m not ruling that out) and the real estate market totally crashes and we see a recession, then obviously the stock market too will take a hit.
But, the ones to suffer more are the least efficient advertising platforms (radio, newspaper, TV companies) and not so much the online media companies who will provide a higher ROI and more effective platform.
Alas, all to say, times are good, and indeed it won’t take much for things to get off the rails. The only lesson to keep in mind is always learn from history and keep the champagne on chill until there is really a reason to celebrate.
When Sumner Redstone spun off CBS from Viacom, the logic was that Viacom would house the higher growth units while CBS would provide investors with the income that safer investments should offer.
Today’s announcement that CBS replaced former digital dean Larry Kramer with Allen & Co. dealmaker Quincy Smith suggests that CBS - whose stock has outperformed Viacom mind you - is gunning for growth itself.
This morning, we covered the coincidence or irony that Mr. Smith is hired one month after Viacom replaced Tom Freston with dealmaker Philip Dauman…
Now we’re pointing out the irony and - with all due respect - the nearsightedness of both companies saying one the one hand that “we’re looking for young promising businesses” and “the next YouTube.”
Of course, YouTube went from 0 to $1.65 billion in 18 months but was far more an anomaly than the rule. YouTube prospered through a combination of:
- luck (MySpace only refused to block the embedding of YouTube clips on Myspace when it was already too large);
- carpe diem (online video exploded)
- planning (going with Adobe Macromedia’s flash technology)
- connections (Sequoia backed it early on, meaning that it had enough funds to outrun its costs and scale)
- diplomacy (Chad Hurley being the anti-Shawn Fanning)
- and mainly… (a [mis-]management of fear vs. greed on behalf of record labels and film studios).
While ”the next Google, MySpace or YouTube” is inevitably lurking around in the nadir of the world wide web, the fact remains that YouTube would have never reached the zenith under a traditional media company. It would have been sued right off the bat and corporate turfbattles would have grounded it before you can say lawsuit.
The lesson - and challenge - for both Misters Dauman and Smith is to recognize that acquiring any promising company and housing it underneath their roof will not ensure the success thereof (i.e. Facebook anyone? Mark Z. should stick it out and succeed on his own, selling it out, for someone like him will lead to a frustrating existence). For our previous posts on Facebook click here.
They need to recognize that only a select few companies and entrepreneurs will succeed and exceed within the environment of a major, traditional media company. This is where both dealmakers might need to dust off their organizational behavior textbooks and leave the calculators in their back-pockets.
Then, and only then, will they go down in the histories of corporate dealmakers as Misters and not messers.
