And in a related story, Skype’s co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold the VOIP pioneer to eBay for $2.4B - $4.1B (time of purchase - final) are in talks to re-acquire Skype from eBay.
Oh, the two launched Joost, which has probably not matched the hype with which it launched.
In as much as Skype was a classic text book case of how to scale a web startup (come to think of it, I am shocked I didn’t put it in our Top 13 Explosive Web Startups of All Time), Joost makes the list of everything that can go wrong with a startup.
However, the fact that the two are publicly seeking to buy back Skype says as much about Joost as it does about Skype. One has to wonder, why not go sit on a beach, or invest in other projects via their Atomico fund?
Yes, the title of this post is meant as a joke.
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WatchMojo NewsletterFrom the Wikia Search emailing list:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jason McCabe Calacanis <jason@calacanis.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:13 PM
Subject: [Search-l] Why did Search Wikia Fail, where did it succeed?
To: Mailing list for Search Wikia <search-l@wikia.com>Friends,
I’m thinking of writing up a recap of what went well with Wikia search (nutch/lmprovements) and what didn’t.
Was wondering if in the spirit of disclosure those involved would give a public (or private) accounting… Jason@calacanis.com
Also, Mahalo has some open crawl interest and would love to host this list If it is going to get shut down. Perhaps we should move to a google group before it does?
Note: not looking for Jimmy Wales bashing–just lessons learned.
Best j
No comment. Actually, that’s a lie: how about that stupid email list? I emailed Jimbo and his sidekick and offered them MetaMojo.com (which I pretty much discontinued to focus on WatchMojo.com, wisely), which was based on Nutch/Lucene and they could not even explain what they were up to.
Wales might be a God for investing Wikipedia, but this search project has disaster written all over it. More on Wikisearchwhatever and Mahalo here.
Once in a while, I spot a comment that is either interesting, insightful, intelligent, irreverent… and I post it.
From Tech Crunch’s piece on Veoh Compass
Cut them some slack. IF ANYONE IS OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER, VEOH came into being right behind YouTube, along with Vimeo/Revver/Brightcove/now-Crackle/etc. — Yes, VCs threw money at them (bless those days), but, NO ONE IN THIS SPACE has figured out a great business model and they burn through money because they burn through bandwidth. YouTube’s projected to LOSE $470k this year? Without Goog propping them up, they’d be deader than day-old fish.
BRIGHTCOVE abandoned it’s mission and strategy a few times and guess what? They’re alive. Adapt or Die.
The problem with most/all of these ventures is they never learned how to be a “Distributor” in the film industry sense of the word. They are networks without distribution “Rights” (value). They never tapped into the traditional media talent pool to truly converge the Industries. Yes, they could have used their money in a less-geek’d out sort of way and maybe become sustainable businesses.
Hence, we’re stuck with Hulu, which is old media on a new screen and the shining golden child of “newteevee.” Hulu is part of a distribution chain, it’s not a standalone tech network.
VEOH tried (a bit) with their Prom Queen deal, etc., but, there are only so many B. Diller’s in the world and VEOH wasn’t pro-active in more alliances of that nature. And, they didn’t nab ownership in the distribution Rights.
Technology isn’t Content.
$70MM later, there are no tangible/valuable assets. Because they didn’t understand Distribution. That’s kind of sad, because no one has an exit strategy or safety net.
Hopefully, Dmitry’s Twitter quest for a date will end better than his company has.
Read the whole piece here. See our two cents on Veoh and its peers here.
Found here:
3. Content Is More Important Than Distribution Channel.
I’ve been engaged in this business long enough to know one thing: content is king. Compelling presentation is important, as is selection of the right distribution channel, but if the audience doesn’t immediately sense value in the content they are seeing, they will move on to the next site. That means a provider of high quality content can virtually come from nowhere to capture the attention of an audience and dethrone an industry leader. Bloomberg versus Dow Jones is an early example. More recently, the simple graphic presentation of Google is more than trumped by the value of the content it provides, and because of that, Google changed the way people use the Internet.
It makes sense therefore for investors to consider which entrenched leaders might not be as entrenched as once thought, especially when smaller, hungrier, more innovative and more aggressive competitors develop new ways of providing high value content.
No arguments from me. In fact, related here:
- Commodization of Distribution and Scalability of Content
- Content vs. Distribution is Secondary to Quality and Scarcity.
Back in 2007, I began to run some projections and estimated that by 2021, Web advertising would be bigger than TV advertising. If you consider what’s happened to print as a result to Web 1.0 (text), then Web 2.0 (not that Web 2.0, I am referring to video in this context), TV media companies will suffer a fate as bad if not worst than print companies: shrinking revenues, eroding margins, less value. This is why we penned: Understanding the angst and envy amongst TV executives.
Last year, private equity powerhouse (if that isn’t an oxymoron these days, what with the economic meltdown) Veronis Suhler Stevenson said that by 2011, web advertising will surpass both TV and newspapers with $61.98B in spending. FT published an article, so did Mediapost.
In fact, it’s already happening elsewhere around the world, in places like Australia, for example.
Regardless of whether this happens in 2011 or 2021, it will happen…
Here is more evidence that at least in terms of media consumption, this will happen sooner than we think.
I had also projected US online advertising to cross $100B by 2020. I wonder if this will happen even sooner, now.
