iPlot

Brave New Consumer Media World

Five years ago everyone in Silicon Valley would have scoffed at the idea to start-up a consumer media venture – now investors are vying for anything that wears the three magic keywords social networking, portable, and video.

It’s noteworthy that the new consumer media wave is mainly taking place in the Valley and not in Hollywood or New York. At Silicon Ventures’ Digital Media Symposium 2006, the crème de la crème of the Valley’s investors and consumer media entrepreneurs got together to discuss trends, business models, and opportunities in this old new space. After a crisp introduction and industry overview by Thomas Meredith (P2P Cash), the panel, moderated by Adam Lashinsky (Fortune) and consisting of Jan Jannink (Imeem and formerly Napster), Eli Harari (co-founder and CEO of SanDisk Corp.), Jonathan Sasse (CEO of Iriver America), and Russell Siegelman, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, debated the miraculous rise of MySpace and what will be universal "all-you-can play" device of the future. Harari used the opportunity to show off SanDisk's new MP3 player, which he boasted is "definitely better than an iPod Nano." Aside from that, the discussion confirmed what most people might have suspected anyway: social networking, video, and portable media are hot, and whoever manages to combine them into one compelling service is a winner these days.

In the poster session, where young start-ups were given the chance to exhibit their business ideas, you could see what’s already out there. Some highlights:

imeem is a consumer-focused company dedicated to giving its users a richly enhanced user experience while allowing them to have control over their content and how they communicate with others.

NeoEdge Networks brings digital content providers closer to their customers. Its innovative, proven technology enables software, game publishers and media providers to digitally distribute, manage and monetize their offerings directly to users on-demand.

inDplay.com is an online, independent film directory, and global licensing and rights management platform. inDplay.com's goal is to accelerate production, demand, and access to independent films through a discovery, networking, and licensing platform. The company lists Eric Schmidt (Google?) as one of their investors.

Veodia democratizes digital media publishing by making it easy and affordable for anyone - enterprises, universities and consumers - to create and distribute live and recorded video to a large community of Internet viewers on PC, Mac, 3G phones or video iPods. The company calls it “Instant Online Video” and says live-video broadcasting will be as easy as making a phone call with their solution.

Silicon Valley, Leading the Consumer Media Explosion

Hosted by Silicon Ventures, the Digital Media Symposium 2006 will focus on Silicon Valley as the driving force of the consumer media explosion. The event will take place in Mountain View, CA, on Wednesday, March 15, 6:30-9:30 pm.

After networking and a poster session of consumer media start-ups, a panel will discuss digital rights, copy protection, consumer technology, video formats, licensing, and more. Panelists include Eli Harari (Founder and CEO, SanDisk Corporation), Richard Atkinson ( Vice President, Anti-Piracy Strategy & Operations, Walt Disney Studios), Dan Sheeran (Senior Vice President, Music and Video RealNetworks, Inc), Dan Sheeran (Senior Vice President, Music and Video RealNetworks, Inc.), Jonathan Sasse (President/CEO, iriver America), Jan Jannink (Founder/CTO & President Imeem). The keynote speaker will be Thomas Meredith (Founder/CEO, P2P Cash) and the panel will be moderated by Adam Lashinsky (Fortune magazine).

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: Collaboration through the Backchannel

Jeff Nolan (SAP), Ross Mayfield (Socialtext) and Charlene Li (Forrester Research) were the speakers at the “SIG Software: Web 2.0 in the Enterprise” event this past Thursday in Santa Clara. After moderator Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC) had unsuccessfully tried to decipher the “alphabet soup” of Web 2.0 applications, the panel soon became an open forum in a perfect example of true web 2.0 social interaction. An at times heated debate brought those who denied the game-changing nature of web 2.0 applications for the enterprise in opposition to those who consider it a radical disruption for the traditional players that they will hardly be able to ignore. But the wikipedia effect with its ‘wisdom of the crowds’ did not translate to the off-line world on this night so that one of the rare concise statements from the audience remained wishful thinking: “Web 1.0 meant you expected answers to your questions from someone else; Web 2.0 means all of us here giving you the answer to your question.”

If any, the key takeaways were: Wikis are conversations based on trust and therefore may or may not have a place in the strictly regulated enterprise architecture. The fact is that more and more professionals smuggle web 2.0 services into their organizations bypassing IT (as one panelist aptly noted, “The last time I went to IT they gave me a list with all the projects they would NOT implement this year.”) But it also seems true that there is still a long way to go before the enterprise comfortably places its data on third-party hosted services - with SAP (which works with Wikis hosted by Socialtext) and some others being the notable exception. Blogs, wikis, mash-ups and the like are only slowly making inroads to where the big money is. A recent Gallup survey found that still only 22 of the Fortune 500 companies run public blogs.

At the very end of the event one attendant brought some pragmatic light into the dogmatic speeches: "How do I make money with web 2.0?" he asked the panelists.

Zoli's Blog has a very detailed summary of the event

BzzAgent Raises $13.8 Million in Funding

Word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent has closed a $13.75 million second round of funding - raised from General Catalyst Partners and IDG Ventures Boston - to build new market share and add staff, reports CNET. BzzAgent has clients such as Anheuser-Busch, Cadbury Schweppes, Ralph Lauren and Levi's Dockers.

"BzzAgent is well-positioned to become a category-defining company that will dramatically change the way companies market to consumers," John Simon, managing director at General Catalyst Partners, said in a statement.

BzzAgent's model is dependent on volunteers, or BzzAgents, who talk up merchandise and listen for word on the street about products, then file reports, explains MediaPost. The agents are required to disclose their affiliation with BzzAgent; they file between 4,000 and 9,000 reports a week.

Two Faces of Innovation

From MacWorld to the SF Web Innovators Network

This day was all about innovation for me. It started at the DMV where it took a sensational 10 minutes(!) to renew my driver’s license. Then I went to the MacWorld at San Francisco's Moscone Center before ending the day at the SF Web Innovators Network (SFWIN) event, taking place in the backroom of a Noe Valley sushi restaurant. The SFWIN is a group of people in the technology industry who are getting together once a month for drinks, conversation, and to get to know one another. Most of the attendees were entrepreneurs with ideas or actual ventures for the web 2.0 space. People like Scott McMullan from Jotspot, Chris Jones from Radar Networks, or Chris Law from Aggregate Knowledge. Most of them have or hope for angels’ funding. It was interesting to be first overwhelmed by the mesmerizing yet almost predictable form of innovation that is lavishly expressed in all the new Apple toys, designed for people who are supposed to be creative, and then to meet people who actually are (creative). Here money turning into innovation, there innovation (maybe) turning into money. Somewhere in-between, in a spot not too uncomfortable: me and the company I work for, Mindjet.

News Corp Appoints Youngest Senior Executive as Internet Chief

Interesting article in Staff Brand Republic (especially for those who want to sell their Internet venture. He's da man!):

"NEW YORK – Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has named Jeremy Philips, a 33-year-old former management consultant, to head its internet acquisition strategy.

Philips, who is News Corp's youngest senior executive, is in charge of identifying acquisition targets and pursuing Murdoch's strategy of growing the media giant's online operations.

The former McKinsey & Company consultant joined News Corp just over a year ago and has been advising Murdoch, who is chairman and CEO, on plans to spend as much as $2bn on further internet acquisitions.

News Corp has made a string of online acquisitions in the last 12 months. Most recently in November it paid £14.3m for Asserta Holdings, the owner of UK property website Propertyfinder.com.

Prior to that News Corp bought video game and movie website company IGN Entertainment, which owns GameSpy and Rotten Tomatoes, for $650m (£365m) and MySpace.com for $580m. It also lifted its stake in realestate.com.au to 51.5%, giving it a voting majority.

However, the internet acquisition strategy has come under fire from some quarters.

WPP's CEO Sir Martin Sorrell accused Murdoch of internet panic buying. "Rupert Murdoch, who I admire more than any other media executive... has been willing to make [internet] acquisitions almost willy-nilly," Sorrell said."

Web Mondays - Bringing the Valley to Germany

Tim (not related) Bonnemann is the man behind the Web Mondays - an honorable attempt to bring the spirit of Silicon Valley and the Web 2.0 excitement to his home country Germany.

The first event of this kind was held in October and Tim has posted a follow-up on his blog: "A nice mix of well over 80 people attended, among them bloggers (some of Germany’s top-ranked, in fact), podcasters, wikipedians, software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, senior business people, internet veterans, students, journalists etc. as well as a few newbies or otherwise interested bystanders. Some people came all the way from Frankfurt, Stuttgart, or even Brussels (Belgium). There were a total of four brief standup presentations of current projects that night. And to top things off, we even had sponsors for the first couple rounds of drinks for everyone."

There are two Web Monday meetups taking shape, one in Cologne and the other one in Berlin. Apparently, some people in Hamburg and Frankfurt have expressed interest in setting up local editions of Web Monday in their respective city or region as well. The Web Monday wiki has proven to be an invaluable tool in setting up all this. Its doors are always open, and anyone interested is more than welcome to contribute — on both sides of the Atlantic.

Silicon Valley 2.0

I attended a networking event of the German-American Business Association (GABA) last night at the German consulate in San Francisco. Every year before the Holidays, the consul and GABA invite German-American VC’s to project the “business finance climate” of the forthcoming year. One of the key takeaways this year was that “the entrepreneurs are back,” as Tom Gieselmann from BV Capital pointed out, and that the pockets of VC’s are again filled with money aggresively competing for the best investments. Gieselmann stated that “you can build a company these days with much less capital” than 10 years ago, during the heydays of the last dot.com boom. His investment focus is on B2C Internet ventures (who would have thought 5 years ago that this again would be possible one day?).

The other line that sticked came from Alexander Fries, President of Ecosystems Ventures and Co-Founder of the European American Angels Club. He illustrated the dense infrastructure of Silicon Valley by a golden rule of thumb: "If you go meet with a start-up and take the car, you should be able to drive back with the same load of gas." You wouldn’t come very far on your way to the next venture on the autobahn if you followed this rule in Germany.