"Google is a large distributed supercomputer among many data centers over fiber optic network that eventually are services available to end-users."

want poster
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Melbourne lost to Saints last night and I'm still farely depressed about that. Had to avoid Herald Sun and The Age today and focus on AFR so as to avoid post match analysis.

I hadn't heard google's alternative mission statement to 'indexing all the world's information' standard. From Herr Schmidt in BW : "Google is technologically a large supercomputer. It's a distributed supercomputer among many data centers doing all sorts of interesting things over fiber optic network that eventually are services available to end-users. Another way to look at Google is solving end-user problems that really matter to large numbers of people."

Currently Watching : Slow burner of a video by YouTube cofounder Karim to Stanford Undergrads. Wow. Some gems in there (the first video showed on YouTube etc)

"Google would have to place $35 billion of gross advertising spending.. to double its current operating profits from 2006 levels."

more testing
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm a bit behind on my foreign movies, but having exhausted all other films at the local Balnarring DVD outlet, I'm into the Asian triad/kungfu flix. Started with Infernal Affairs 1-2-3 which The Departed is based on (script and scenes are about 85% the same) and tonight was a bite of South Korea - A Bittersweet Life, which had me at hello, the title. It rocked. Supposedly not as much as Google will in reselling offline advertising, that is unless it comes up with a new algorithm, as it also needs to do for YouTube, social networks, and when it purchases Spotrunner and emulates and extend on its me-too DoubleClick play.

InternetOutsider : "Because, for every dollar of advertising spent on AdSense, Google captures only a tiny fraction of the profit that it captures for every dollar spent on AdWords. When an advertiser buys a $1 per-click AdWord key word, Google generates $1 of revenue and about 60-70 cents of operating profit (very rough numbers). When an advertiser buys a $1 per click AdSense keyword, meanwhile, Google generates $1 of GROSS revenue but only about 40 cents of net revenue--and only about 10-20 cents of operating profit.. So how much TV, Radio, and Print spending would Google have to capture to, say, double its current operating profits from 2006 levels? (Assuming no further growth of the online businesses, which obviously should continue to grow quite nicely). Google generated about $3.5 billion of operating profit last year. To generate this much from an offline TV, radio, and print placement business, assuming a generous 10% operating margin (very generous, I think), Google would have to place $35 billion of gross advertising spending. This compares to about $4 billion it generated from its wildly successful online ad rep/placement business, AdSense, in 2006."

Not sure about the no growth factor. Web ads have overtaken newspaper ads in the UK. Wonder when that happens downunder ? BBC : "Spending on UK internet advertising surged in 2006, overtaking newspaper ads for the first time, a report says. Online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during the year, the report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said. In contrast, spending on national newspaper ads grew just 0.2% to £1.9bn, taking a 10.7% share of the market."

i knew i should have been a criminal.

the lead
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Paul Graham's Tiered Self Actualisation Archetypes
Tier 1. Entrepreneurs.
Tier 2. Farmers.
Tier 3. Criminals
Tier 4. Employees

From his latest soon to be quoted essay : "To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need money, you should get a job. Actually this tradition is not much more than a hundred years old. Before that, the default way to make a living was by farming. It's a bad plan to treat something only a hundred years old as an axiom. By historical standards, that's something that's changing pretty rapidly."

NYPost : "Rose McGowan ordered her ‘Grindhouse’ co-stars not to wear red to the premiere so she wouldn’t be upstaged. "It caused quite a stir. The feeling is she's self-obsessed." Twins Elise and Electra Avellan – who have minor roles in the movie ignored the suggested ‘dress code’ and arrived in brazen red outfits."

"It's called Werewolf Women of the SS." : "Say no more. Go shoot it."

the crew
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I've hired Dusk till Dawn + True Romance (plus Ong Bak + Bittersweet Life) as well as having recently rewatched Sin City to get in the mood for Grindhouse. I expect RR's film to be better, but the intermission between the two flicks is supposedly where the juice is. April 6 US, probably on the Internet by April 8th, hope they dont make me watch it on 20" Imac Peekvid quality first. They need to show it an Dromana Drive-In !

LAT : "The filmmakers enlisted the likes of Rob Zombie ("The Devil's Rejects"), Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead") and Eli Roth ("Hostel") when it became clear they were too bogged down with finishing their features to take on the trailers as well. Rodriguez recalled Zombie's pitch: "He goes, 'It's called 'Werewolf Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it.' "

AintitCool : "Also, Cheech from Cheech and The Chong is in the trailer, and he’s a priest and he’s shooting people, which is ironic, I think.. First 300 and now this? I think the summer of 2007 just went, “Hey, let me take you to a free taquito buffet” and you eat all these taquitos and then the summer goes, “Here comes a foot to your stomach”, but you go, “It’s full of taquitos” but it’s too late – there’s a boot in your stomach only the boot is really a motorcycle and you puke up a bikini girl who blows you and then kills your boss with a hammer."

Grindhouse Your Way thru The Pain.

april 6
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

April 6 - Grindhouse : Rodriguez/Tarantino double bill. Cant wait, tho not sure when it is released downunder ?

Quentin/RR interview: "Well, we hope to keep doing this for a long time. There's all these subgenres in exploitation movies and cinema in general that we like, and this gives us a license to explore them all ... I do have an idea in my mind for an old-school kung-fu movie that would be shot in Mandarin ... there would be a long version of it, with subtitles and all serious. Then I would cut another version way down, like they did in America, and dub it! Not to make it look silly, but you can't help but benefit from its humorous quality."

If you're not making a film or stealth web 2.0 startup the latest BRW Rich Mofo List confirms being an employee also isn't a pathway to the top even if the grass is always greener : "Hitting paydirt might not necessarily come from joining a big corporation. According to the latest BRW Executive Rich List, joining a small fast-growing company with a pay policy that offers plenty of opportunity for equity might be a better solution. The average total remuneration package on the list is $1.98 million. Two-thirds of the people on the list have packages under $1 million, and five, including Publishing and Broadcasting chief James Packer, take no salary."

Q: What is your advice for a startup looking for venture capital funding?
A: Run your company. The money can help accelerate it but don't wait for the funding to get started. The best companies get their first money from customers, not VCs. An investor can tell whether an entrepreneur is exploring a theoretical business idea or dedicated to the business. To an investor, make your company look like it is a train leaving the station. (DFJ's Tim Draper : Via Infectious Greed)

Alarmclock.com on Natpal.com : '..The venture capitalist, wearing an open-necked shirt and sitting with his arms crossed, cuts in. "You're up and running?" he asks.'

"Yes, we have about $500,000 in sales."

"What's your cost per client acquisition?"

"About $300. And we have about an 85 percent retention rate."

Hodge for Hussey Already.

07 M3V8
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Look I'm a big fan of Mr Cricket but he's choking, having not made double figures in 4 world cup matches, and his form was petering out when he lost the series to NZ and even in Australia at the end. While Brad Hodge got over his yips and is just the run machine Hussey was. David his brother would make more runs at the moment. No run of high scores ever stays in cricket, and so its Hodge for Hussey from here already selectors.

Cricket-Blog : "I had it all planned out. Went to bed nice and early at 8.30pm. Set the alarm for 11.30pm. Somehow dragged myself out of bed at the appropriate time and staggered out to the TV, armed with a bowl of chips.. Hayden recalled he was dressed in Australian colours and set about dominating the bowlers. Taking a leaf out of Pietersen's book, he advanced towards the bowler so often, I thought umpire Aleem Dar might warn him for walking on the pitch. Hayden's 158 off 143 balls is all the more impressive considering his ponderous start.. The momentum of the innings was stunted temporarily by a mid-order collapse. Bravo kicked things off, trapping Clarke LBW then Symonds and Hussey fell cheaply. Hussey's form slump has his batting average plummeting to 60 (also losing his #1 ranking to Kevin Pietersen)."

i'm in if u r.

pushup queen
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I really like the social finance space. Whether it's for stocks (BullPoo, Stockpickr) or financial planning (Wesabe) Major finance sites should have a major headstart, unless they are too cluttered and stuck to 1999 user models, that allow the pureplays to cutnrun.

Stocks are another microchunk that are very glocal ie Locals here primarily trade the ASX. And the locally licensed etrade entity is in a big takeover by the bank ANZ. Wonder if any of the banks with their huge outsourced development and teams working on legacy, crm, security, internet banking etc, will let their online trading teams go near this. In a bull market people like to chatter and punt... and lawyers tend to imagine Viacom meet the anarchist's scenarios needing only to mention one safe word "Advice". Not. Allowed. To Give it. Or Facilitate It.

TechCrunch on Marketwatch who are adding digg like functionality to stock codes, neat : "The predictor is a small widget included on every stock listing page (example). Users are asked whether the stock will move up or down on the next trading day from its current price. Once a selection is made, the overall user votes are shown."

David Hicks a Non-Passionate User of Guantanamo Bay

hicks
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Roger Bannister: "How do you ladies keep your figures? Is there just a huge vat of cobbler vomit somewhere?... But worth it?"

Defendant 1 : "Wow, character assassination* by image and psedonym, believe what you will, get some help, goodbye."*

Julie Vignon: "Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don't want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps."

Defendant 2 : "The only 'passionate users' I know are crack heads."



“The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.” (Krzysztof Kieslowski)

"DAVID Hicks pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge only to escape five years of "hell" at Guantanamo Bay. The Adelaide-born man could be back in Australia by the end of the year after his shock decision to plead guilty to providing material support for terrorism. Terry Hicks said his son's admission was his only way out of the prison. "He wants out, It's the only way it looks like he's going to get out. No one's going to help him, the Australian Government couldn't care, they don't care. I believe they just want David to plead guilty regardless. It's a way to get home, and that's what he's told us. He just wants to get home. He's had five years of absolute hell and I think anyone in that position, if they were offered anything, they would possibly take it." (News.com.au)

the hyperlocal extortion business model.

poptwiturls
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The latest on how Yelp et hyperlocalUGC is adding complexity to the restaurant marketing equation. You no longer just need to impress the Epicure writer on a Tuesday. Watching the business model evolve will be very interesting, esp as the services are very consumer not advertiser focused.

SF Chronicle via Screenwerk : "Kridech said he begged Yelp staffers to have a complimentary meal at Senses, hoping that would turn the tide for his restaurant. Instead, he says, Yelp offered to sell him an ad in which a positive posting -- including a line from the restaurant thanking the reviewer for the kind words and noting that the business is a sponsor of the site -- is placed above all other critiques. But Kridech thought it was extortion."

The $500 TVC Price Point.

pump duddy
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I have no idea why google haven't bought Spotrunner yet, which is a very interesting way of combining a $500 self service production TVC ad, with locally targeted low cost TV exposure. I wonder if anyone will localise this business /model ?

Kelsey : "To date, the power of combining production and media buying has apparently proved compelling. And small businesses apparently see the company’s price point in the environs of $500 as a good deal (although some competitors are coming in cheaper). “$500 is not the negating item. We’re pretty confident if we wanted to raise price, we could. But what we’re doing is working with very small businesses.”"

"Users do not click on clusters, or tags, or categories, or directory tabs, or pulldowns."

funINsun
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"So why won't google just chew you up and spit you out" says the angel to the entremanure. Skrenta says look to toothpaste for the answer and remember - "Users do not click on clusters, or tags, or categories, or directory tabs, or pulldowns."

because you can

rayban ciggies
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So AndyG whose blog i guiltily enjoy but hadnt read for awhile as it wasnt within my greader walled garden, and if it aint in the greader, I dont direct enter your url. Well G as I remember him from V dayz, is the dude with the hair, idol and that other game show bullshit or whatever its called. The one benefit of such celebrity would be to be able to write blog posts like this cameoing as oneself on Ramsay Street :

Best Thing About being on Neighbours (Andy G)
1: They work really, really fast
2: They can’t remember storylines either.
3: They shoot so far in advance, they exist in a permanent state of Deja Vu.
4: They have really good coffee on set.
5: Neighbours girls are really hot up close. And they smell good.

Britney Leaves Rehab but ends up in Hospital with a Newspaper.

goodMSFTgraph
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Sometimes Monday is full of Mondayisms. Ick - what a week, what a day. So everyone is talking about what newspapers should do to cross the gap between their current online ad revenue, and the seepage from print. I'll throw in my bulletpoints as much as I want to resist :

- Buy digg before google or yahoo does. And/Or automattic, movable type. Increase new media R+D by 400%. (google spend $350m per qtr on R+D) Partner with Y-Combinator or TechStars and pay 50% of the $6k per founder, rather buying the resultant properties 18 months later.

- Rightsize costs by 35% and create an online warchest in partnership with Private Equity joint venture. Privatise if public. Sorry more pain. Cut deep. Less so in sales tho. Blame the PE guys.

- Think about creating a hybrid between employment and sackage - Use the Weblogsinc playbook and instead of straight sacking editors, contract them to performance blog; base per word salary plus bonus for uniques/page views and ads.

- Move beyond using solely blog comments and digg this as the way to create a "conversation". Give your audience a blog. We all know anonymous blog comments do not lift the overall "quality" of conversation. Innovate in moderation and make family safe places.

- Crawl the internet for quality blogs, voices, videos, images, ratings, reviews, ads which add to the pro created, evergreen and licensed content. Small steps but u need to move quickly.

- Withdraw/Outsource/Reconfigure those categories where there are better bloggers and other content out there in global/specialist verticals that newspapers no longer own - movies, finance, sports and so on.

- Allow structured user content uploading and pinging ala Outside.in, Google Base, Technorati - with a focus on hyperlocal and folksonomic content mapped to traditional content channels.

- Create new sites that are more cutting edge than startups in Real Estate, Automotive and Employment. Maybe buy from Linkedin, Jobster, Indeed, Trulia, Zillow, Boompa to scale up.

- Develop new aggregation and filtering capabilities to match your MSM content with user generated. Buy sphere, technorati etc.

- Buy smart in the local search space. Pickup Yelp and some smart mapping plays like Wayfaring, Plazes... and integrate.

- Combine new exciting print products with online business models that work. The Twitter model applied to newspapers when people are reading on the way to and from work on public transport. Wesabe works with the business section. Yelp with the Restaurant guide. etc

- Develop a local self service hyperlocal and channel targeted ad mechanism that allows the bundled sale of targeted print, online and third party federated media like blog ads. Buy quigo, federated media, ads-click etc. Also cut a deal with Google to bundle hyperlocal and category targeted ads.

- Incentivise salesforce to better sell bundled online and offline solutions. Ensure this is made easy, with good commissions and great performance. Think Yahoo Panama, but for newspapers with a focus on local and selling more than your own properties. Own the local advertiser like you used to.

- Continue to beef up premium video coverage. Buy some quality video/audio embedding technology companies as well as create a huge distributed media revenue sharing offer ala revver, but with an AB demographic geo-targeted focus.

So on and so forth.. The biggest opportunity outside turning passive print/online audience into consumer-creators/reader-reporters is owning the local advertising sales channel (self-service, direct and agency sales) It's not like anyone else has figured out how to monetise myspace, facebook, youtube etc.

Bundling up local user generated content (from within and outside your site) and sold thru self service and your full service local sales team (with some adwords too) would be pretty compelling one stop shop for Mr Average Newspaper advertiser. It would drive up overall advertiser yields and analysts might lift your blended earning multiple enough to cover cost of this campaign.

Summary : Cut Costs. Setup a $1b internal fund + Copy what Fox Interactive did to TV/teenagers, but with a focus on the newpaper/genx:baby boomer demographic. Wash, rinse, repeat.

"Actually, I don't have a TV but I do read newspapers. But how I read them is important. I don't pick up a physical newspaper -- I'll get sent a link. The experience is very different, given to me by different people. What my friends sent to me or what other people think and send to me." In the next [Facebook] iterations, you're going to see real stories being produced. 'These people went to this party and they did this the next day and then here's the discussion that was taking place off of this article in The Wall Street Journal. And these two people went to this party and they broke up the next day.' Whatever, you can start weaving together real events into stories. As these start to approach being stories, we turn into a massive publisher. Twenty to 30 snippets of information or stories a day, that's like 300 million stories a day. It gets to a point where we are publishing more in a day than most other publications have in the history of their whole existence." (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg quoted in WSJ via Infectious Greed)

Ben Love My Way Cousins on Twitter

Ben Cousins
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Well his doppelganger. (molly, paulm?) The Age : "West Coast coach John Worsfold has revealed Daniel Kerr admitted taking drugs - one of up to eight Eagles players who have made similar admissions." (btw speaking of messy bens, saw the final ep of series 3 Love My Way Friday which has been just soooo good.. where Ben Mendelsohn plays the reformed junkster2@T and the whole cast is fn brilliant. by far best aussie tv show ever.)



Claudia Alpha Female Karvan : "Lewis’s challenge is that he’s a bit of a control freak. He’s trying to ward off this web of relationships that Frankie has and trying to keep her all to himself. He’s probably the most orthodox of the characters, so he doesn’t like the history that Frankie has with Charlie and Tom – relationships based on history rather than blood. Tom’s journey is to do with not having a sense of place. He’s a single guy, no kids, and a lot of disposable income, and there are frustrations and a self-destructive impulse that comes up. And for Julie and Charlie, it’s all about trying to be the super-couple. They’re very Sydney, very into career and real estate and the like. And Frankie has met a guy she loves, and she wonders why she loves him when there’s all this stuff that gets in the way. At times it feels like she’s pushed to the corners of her own life, so she’s struggling to hold onto her old family and her art and her role as a mother, whatever form that takes. There’s still anger there, still a feeling of trying to reconcile herself with what she’s ended up with. She’s trying to appreciate it, move forward, not be bitter and accept love, even if she doesn’t seem to trust it. She still has a lot to work through.""

Steve Stifler is a Twittering Nihilist with a Widget

disposable iconicism
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Been getting ready for Sydney (as well as dealing with Monday) but had to throwdown Fred's line about the essence of a startup, in this case about the widget business who Mr Feld is a bit circumspect about (and i agree)

A VC : "But I guarantee you that there are some smart crafty entrepreneurs out there right now who have figured an angle that does make sense and are building the technology to power their move. I think that is what startups are all about. It's not just about technology. That's necessary but not sufficient. It's about the angle of attack. The entry point. Getting that right is often the hardest part."

Brad Feld's 4 Type of Widget Businesses
1. a new form of ad network: analogous to DoubleClick
2. a widget management system (WMS): analogous to CMS’s
3. a content distribution network (CDN): analogous to Akamai
4. an analytics business (Stats): analogous to pick-your-analytics package

And you have to laugh at the well written Nick Carr piece on Twitter; "Narcissism is just the user interface for nihilism, of course, and with artfully kitschy services like Twitter we're allowed to both indulge our self-absorption and distance ourselves from it by acknowledging, with a coy digital wink, its essential emptiness. I love me! Just kidding!"

New media by definition is a progression from old media, and the more low brow 2.0 South Park apps the better. High art on the web equals no traffic equals deadpool.

Nihilist: We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.
The Dude: Excuse me?
Nihilist: I said
[shouting]
Nihilist: "We'll cut off your johnson"!
Nihilist: Just you think about that, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Yeah, your wiggly penis, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.

Tara Woolf in Hunt clothing responds well (what a fun debate - there needs to be a twitterOFF. and i've broken my gamma twitterrCLUB pledge : "the first rule of twitter club is to not speak about twitter club") :

HorsePigCow : "I mean, really, the only truly certainty we have is death, right? Morbid thought, but currently accurate (personally, if given the choice to live forever, I’d decline). With you will die your consciousness…unless you record it and pass it along. And, hell, maybe nobody will ever give a flying snake whether you’ve done that or not, but I’m venturing a guess that someone (even if it’s only one person…your great great great grandchild) will."

Meeting in at Project X, Santa Monica : "Hello everyone, and thankyou for coming today. Now does anyone need to catch a plane or organise a car for a particular time, please speak to Tyler. Well thankyou again, especially to The GoDaddy Grrl who is the fill-in today for Jessica Biel till more people have HDWebTV; She is also shooting The Fantastic Four Prequel. So We're here to discuss a charity which is very close to Jessica's heart. And that is the fight of celebrities against paparazzi. Jessica herself has purchased 100 disposable Kodak wifi cameras for her peer celebrity actors that automatically tweet photos as they are being chased by paparazzi. The tweets are automatically uploaded to a HDNet Website where Jason Calacanis has a ninja creating mashups. This will stop the inevitable death of an A-List heiress. A percentage of advertising generated from these tweets will be donated to the SMS homeless who lack an all you can eat SMS plan." Cue 30 seconds of Scoble laughing...

Steve Stifler: What is this, a dance off?

"Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourselves' (12st book) -everytime there's a triumph in the world a million souls hafta be trampled on.-altman Its true. But treasure each triumph as they come." (Llo@perez)

"We're tweeters twittering tweets. We're twitters tweetering twits. We're twits tweeting twitters. We're Tweety Birds." (Rough Type)

Steve Stifler: Shhiittt, I got a frosted ass crack! Hey Finch, you want this for here, or to go?
Paul Finch: "A witty saying proves nothing," -Voltaire.
Steve Stifler: "Suck my dick!" -Ron Jeremy.

Not Just Another Sunday

helllllo 9974S
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Hard day this Sunday (need to get better with these situations) with some sombre textbook but true posts by the Wizard + Will Price.

Ask the Wizard : "I hesitate to even start writing about options. They make my head hurt. Anything I write about options will likely be met with the ninety-one different opinions about options that have been forged by ninety-one different prior outcomes for ninety-one different people. Options are like bad tequila, you wake up in the morning with packing tape where your eyes are supposed to be and all you can think is "It seemed like such a good idea at the time when that guy said 'hey everybody, let's issue options!'"."

Will Price : "While VCs believe "companies are bought and not sold," acquirers tend to believe that "successful partners make the best acquisition targets." Successful partnerships are characterized by:
* a history of successful joint customer engagements,
* successful technical integrations and co-deployments,
* a joint roadmap,
* co-marketing and sales traction, and
* management teams and team members with a track record of collaborating to reach shared objectives.).."

"I believe that geographic-dependent context will be the next key shift. GPS, mesh networks, articulated presence.."

surprise surprise
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Danah says Web 3.0 is "Place" ie Local. Hyperlocal. The Immediate Real World Around Me. Apophenia : "I believe that geographic-dependent context will be the next key shift. GPS, mesh networks, articulated presence, etc. People want to go mobile and they want to use technology to help them engage in the mobile world. Unfortunately, i think we have huge structural barriers in front of us. It's not that we *can't* do this on a technological level, it's that there are old-skool institutions that want to get in the way. And they want to do it by plugging the market and shaping the law to their advantage. Primarily, i'm talking about carriers. And the handset makers who help keep the carriers alive."

(VH1 Bonus : Sin City 2.0 starts shooting June : "I just saw Robert Rodriguez the night before last, and we've nearly got the script," he said. "We intend to go into prep sometime in the next six weeks, and we're hoping on shooting by June.")

"You have to have an audience to have an upsell"

oopsy daisy
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Local Onliner is one of my favourite blogs on the "local" equation, and their latest update on East US newspapers Free "Big Database Strategy" with Upsell (the basis of Yellowpages + Google) is interesting.

LocalOnliner : "Ottaway Newspapers’ Kurt Lozier says his chain of mostly northeast and Oregon newspapers, owned by Dow Jones, is fighting back against Craig’s List and others with a “Big Database Strategy” that offers free listings to businesses in hopes of winning upsells. The listings are free, “but we’re selling the white space around them,” he says. Looking beyond directories, Lozier says that “employment and rentals are not far behind.“ Bob Kellegher from Calkins Media, the chain of suburban Philadelphia newspapers responsible for Phillyburbs.com, is pursuing a similar strategy. He says Calkins had suffered “a big drop-off in volume” with the arrival of various Web competition, etc., but a recently executed free strategy has won the chain a growth rate of impressions of more than 40 percent. You have to have an audience to have an upsell,” he notes, with satisfaction."

"Don't worry about that. There is no valuation. There's only orchestration."

A380 privateplane
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I really have to read Burn Rate again, my favourite book on Web 1.0, the epoch formely known as Dot Com. From Wired (via an update from Valleywag) : "Don't worry about that. There is no valuation. There's only orchestration..We're not dealing with hard assets. We're not dealing with ordinary balance sheets. We're not dealing with businesses you can analyze in any conventional sense. This is a real life drama. There really will be winners and losers. The winners will win because they have great luck, and because they're... well, tough sons of bitches who manage to smile when their competitors get a quivering lip."

Will TechCrunch go CrunchGoss ?

disposable iconicism
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I wonder if the techcrunchgearnotes will go goss ? I could see it. Seems to be working for Team Sugar. Or is this pure Cnet 2.0 ?

Michael Arrington : "This is yet another product from San Francisco based TeamSugar, an exploding blog network focused on celebrity gossip, fashion, fitness and other topics (the blogs are all listed at the bottom of the TeamSugar home page) . We first covered them last August, a year after launch. At the time they had 1.5 million unique visitors and 13 million monthly page views. Today, co-founder and CEO Brian Sugar says the sites generate 30 million monthly page views on 3.5 million uniques. The company raised $5 million from Sequoia in October 2006."

1999 vs 2007

twitter growth
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I hope not : Big Picture : "Kahn notes that the sizes of the 1998 decline and the 1998-1999 rally were twice as big as their current counterparts, but the structure of the action is very similar."

It's Friday and I Want To Be a Superdistributor

slacker inc
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I still remember around 2000/1 having a vigorous discussion with a German International Business Development Director in a SF warehouse that had a mini basketball court - the startup I think was called Accompany.com that did the whole group buying, wanting to be post ebay, play.

So social commerce that has had many a false start, but is an interesting theoretical place, now that blogs, myspace, youtube, facebook have such reach and widgets are not yet that regulated in terms of revenue share, code blocking and terms. The consumer-creator is allowed to insert code to sell, promote and distribute. So I like Fred's concept of "SuperDistribution". It's definitely got a mass-micro future, because all it really is, is very targeted advertising that sells stuff economically. If the economics worked better than adsense then it could get very interesting.

A VC : "I've wanted to be a superdistributor ever since. When I talk about music, books, politics, Sonos, Blackberry, MacBook, or anything else, I want all of you to be able to click and buy. When I buy something, I want to be able to pass it along to everyone else and get paid for doing that. And I want the people who created the thing I pass along to get paid too."

Eisner Goes Vuguru + Yahoo (could) go Meta-Micro Social Network + Federated Mediaesque

endofhistory
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

What a week. 4 working day week due to Monday public holiday in Melbourne doesnt work, for me anyway. Leads to compressed timeframes for deliverables + non-responsiveness as every1 is so busy. Seeking Alpha blog is waxing on how Yahoo Publisher Network should take over the Federated Media model. I would certainly be a buyer of Yahoo stock more than google at moment, with their relative valuations and opportunities/risks. Not that betting against google is smart. Anyway, buying stock isn't exactly on my immediate horizon :)

Seeking Alpha : "YPN should offer to the AdSense customers a switching incentive to the CPM model, offering them 85% of the ad revenues and a clean alignment with their various target verticals. As soon as the publishers are also aligned by vertical segments it would become a great deal easier for advertisers to plan a media buy that focuses on a certain segment. Recently, Lufthansa (DLAKY) bought ads on 100 Travel sites via Washington Posts Blogroll program at fairly good CPMs. Yahoo is well positioned to leverage this opportunity at a much larger scale than FM, of course, although, FM has advantages in certain niches that may not be priority segments for Yahoo right away."

I have to run out now for an appointment but the best "portal" post of the 4 day week is from David Beach - whose blog I've always enjoyed but especially now as he inhabits that grey land between having worked in portalopia prior, but now being fulltime in a startup. (he's at wink.com ex Yahoo) Similarly Jason Calacanis wants to run/buy his Beta.Netscape team and product. "Do you guys sign the content ?" says JC in his latest podcast in a not too Freudian way while nudge valleywag nudge setting up a digital "micro" studio ala the Eisner model with his broadcast billionaire pal- btw having a web video studio of amateur looking professionally produced non linear series of 4 minute clips is the new 140 character black - eisner's studio is called "Vuguru" which has a slightly sapphic meets elance.com type sound to it.) Anyway, you can't help but dream about having the resources of a large company, but looked at with enterpreneurial vigour.

Beach's Blog : "Yahoo! has an interesting opportunity to become a giant social network of micro networks. A meta social network of micro social networks? Lord, that's geeky.. thought of this because it's almost baseball season (thank God). I found that I wanted to "Add" myself to the Oakland A's page on Yahoo! Sports. By doing so, I would express my affinity to the Oakland A's (Go A's!) and become part of a community of users who also shared my passion for the team. I would then be able to participate in a discussion in that community. I could also be fed updates from the content of the area and the community through a content stream that would appear in a variety of places including my Yahoo account/profile, phone, email, feed reader, etc.. I'd like to join the Yahoo! Nintendo Wii "community", the recipe community, the tech community, and certain categories of news, music, shopping, autos, health, etc. etc. I would even join a search community and a Yahoo! Developer Network community. This would allow me express myself and connect to content and people in an entirely new way. I would then have a Yahoo! profile page that promoted my affinities, interests, friends, personal content, and reputation from across the network to anyone who visited it. It would let me collect and share my flickr photos, videos I made or enjoy, Yahoo! Answers Q&A, bookmarks or whatever I choose to be public. I would also be able to pull in feeds from other personal sources as well as have a blog. People could send me messages and comment on my profile, if I choose the option."

Currently Listening to : CalacanisCast 16 audio : Interview with revver.com CEO about the "50's TV model" (revver was mentioned as the ninemsn project name for one of their web video projects last year, so it will be interesting to see when/if revver come/downunder with ninemsn or others : some interesting stats on how revver revenue is generated - 50c per click is mentioned for video and they want to get $15-$25 CPM - they get a 3% clickthru on a post-roll ad. not as into pre-rolls - they also say they dont focus on being a destination site, but rather focusing on white label deals with clients they have such as MTV/VH1 that is very neat.. I'm finding 30% of my current enterprise "unprompted" demand is for video community solutions; Fast Moving / Consumer Good Companies want video communities, user generated ads, campaign solutions, community, competitions, "Me" focused solutions.. basically even Roy Morgan and Nielsens now say the 14-24 segment is more on YouTube + MySpace than they are on Free to Air TV (this is also why channel 10 isnt performing as well as the "youthful" TV demographic, because well the under 25's dont care about grey's anatomy as much as their new 'adds' on meatspace. more to come on this video are(n)a in 2007. it's quite exciting, esp when there is some kick ass video technology to backend) OK outtee ppls.

save the children.

jolie chad
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Interesting profile piece on the newish "CSO" of MySpace. S for Security. Big job : "We look at, what are hackers doing, what are predators doing?" he says. "Then we go to our engineers and say, suppose you have no worries about resources—what can we do to solve these issues? Is there a change we can make or feature we can add?" Once they have this list in hand, they try to figure out which five or 10 things they can do to hit 80 percent of the problem, and they build the priority list from there."

But Wait There's More : Local Search Steak Knives

or visual
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Selective perception dictates that once you start thinking about something you begin to notice it more frequently; How do you get the world's biggest mashup that will worry the heck out of Yellowpages, Real Estate, Automotive and other high value verticals that intersect on the local space ?

Combine Google Maps, Google Base, Adwords into vertically deployed Google offerings. Google Auto. Google Real Estate. Google Local. When you are worth north of $100B + there's only so much growth that can come small/online business text ads. Next comes car dealers, real estate agents, and local businesses.

SEW : "Last week, Google added a few new features to its Local Business Center. This is the place where any business with a physical location can go to essentially plant themselves on Google Maps.. The features Google has added include the ability to upload or edit photos that appear next to their business listing. Businesses can also now select what type of business they are (restaurant, hotel, plumber, etc.), and accordingly specify “custom attributes” that are specific to them (check-out time, service area, amenities, etc.). Businesses can also change their location on a map if it is incorrect or if they move. Lastly, they can view the clicks they have generated on GoogleMaps, an analytics feature previously reserved for AdWords advertisers"

Interesting to note the very term "Local Search" is a composite one in the same way marketing combines sociology, psychology, economics etc. (alot of professors dont consider it a real "social science") Local Search combines; The 35% of web searches that are local; Yellowpages requests; The location based searches on a classifieds site ? Map searches for properties to view ? Searching for user restaurant reviews ?

This benefits convergent asset players - Google, Sensis (locally), IACI in the US. If they can integrate assets. Something which even Google has been weak at, but the sleeping giant is now rising. Slow/weak execution will also benefit specialists who do "One Thing" in each of the Local Search parts well. Consumers will cobble together their Total Local Search Experience from a range of websites. Advertisers will start buying "clicks" rather than fixed fee from a range of players if they can scale. What they buy will be more than a listing. Geez now I sound like a marketing person. Caffeine is only starting to kick in.

This Would be Where I Mention Local Search Quickly.

then searchresults
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

This Ad Age article on where Local Search is heading is timely given I'm on the panel for this topic early next week @ Search Engine Room. My angle is obvs to do with the bottom up layer of blogs and consumer generated reviews that can be added to the typical topdown search/browse search results based on a list of keyword or category matches with Text Display of Contact Fields incl Name of Business/Person, Address, Phone Number... and if you pay for it... email, website, url, some bolded fonts, pictures and mapping points.

To me, a list of business names with their phone numbers is a stupid search result. It works fine for a consumer that knows what they are "hunting" and just need to find the phone number. So for the majority of searchers it's probably fine - as long as the result is fast, accurate, relevant, detailed etc. But does this help when you are not sure on the merchant ?

This doesn't help me choose from the 220 dry cleaners in Sydney. And I dont even live in Sydney. Not much has changed at the core downunder since the original Yellowpages Print Book. Other than online speed, convenience and definite innovation in mapping ala whereis.

Not that implementing the future is easy, but giving website members the tools to create structured data, as well as crawling it from blogs, is alot more economic than previous models I've seen firsthand @ MSN's Sidewalk, Fairfax then Sensis' Citysearch and Yellowpages. It's also not either/or : User generated structured data is just another index which can be overlayed on a search result/map/virtual image to augment the overall search result.

As Microsoft internally evangelised a decade ago - For the consumer local search is supposed to be a decision support guide which helps the consumer make a better, timely, economic decision. Local search has a ways to go. And getting a critical mass of suitable/sortable/real data will also take time. But some building blocks need to be built. Hence nook, raveaboutit, quotify + dlook. The layout of MyHome and Property.com.au sites, modelled in part on Zillow and Trulia in the US, also provide a strong indication of where the "Local Search" experience will head in the future. More mapping based. Consumer in control. Filtering multiple data-sets : consumer + pro - in one designated hyperlocal suburb/street/geocoded location.

The problem with local search in Australia is technology hasn't progressed and the offers are very biased to the advertiser. ie The current offerings are not offering much additional value on the decision making for the end user. At least in the ways that Ask City, Yelp, Judysbook, Insider Page, Google Maps Mashups, Yahoo Local, Plazes + Wayfaring.com are the next generation of local in the US.

Ad Age on US market : "You're talking a challenge that spans 60,000 different ZIP codes and 80,000 different towns," said Paul Levine, general manager of Yahoo Local, which he claims is the most-used local-search service, with 30 million-plus unique searchers a month. Its mission, in addition to providing listing data, is to help searchers make decisions, he said, through services that combine listings with driving directions and add user-generated content. Another issue, said Matt Booth, senior VP-programming director of interactive local media at Kelsey Group, is that the amount of consumer feedback for businesses outside of restaurants, bars and certain types of shops is still small. "It's a lot easier to get consumers to put restaurant reviews on the web than one for a plumber," Mr. Booth said."

The Amanda Congdon Blank Slate.

Amanda Congdon
Originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

As usual the (SXSW) photos by The Boudist rox (one of Australia's best photographers, if not The, even if he has competition from his significant other, and then there is Modelux too) Anyway, reading vinteresting stealth buzz piece on The Blank Slate from 37Signals on a new app coming out (they have a crm one "Highrise" coming which Anil Dash writes about here)

What they describe is indicative of what is faced when creating a "User Generated Content" community, or any type of member driven structured data app. It leads to many meetings about "Seeding the Community", "viral", "the crack feature", marketing will get involved, the agency, the editors, and the like.

37 Signals : "However, the natural state of the app is that it’s devoid of data. When someone signs up, they are basically starting with a blank slate.. Over the years I’ve noticed that most designers and developers take this blank slate stage for granted. They never really spend a lot of time designing for the blank slate because when they develop/use the app, it’s flush with data (for testing purposes). Sure, they may log-in as a new person a few times, but the majority of their time is spent swimming in an app that is full of data. Unfortunately, every single customer sees the blank slate before they see the “full slate.” They base their opinion of the app/site on the blank slate. Ignoring the blank slate stage is one of the biggest mistakes a designer/developer can make. We’ve decided to use the blank slate stage as an opportunity to insert quick tutorials, help blurbs, and even links to example screenshots to get people started. If you haven’t posted anything yet, we briefly explain how to get started, what a post will look like, etc. We’ve found that these little vignettes really help people get started. They set expectations and help reduce frustration, intimidation, and overall confusion. They work."

$1B here. $1B there.

myspace news
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Billionaire Blog Maverick, has been joined and anted up with Viacom's $1b case against Gootube. His interesting debating point thus : "Viacom doesnt need John or Sally to upload video for them. They are more than capable of doing it themselves. If Viacom wants to put up snippets, scenes, mashups, mockups, quarter, half or full episodes of anything they own, there is nothing to stop them. Its their choice. If they are smart, they will fill every Gootube Server they can reach with their content in a manner that drives viewers back to Viacom properties. They will experiment with every option, including those that engage and involve their viewers, to see what works and what doesn't work and what makes them the most money. Why not ? Google is paying for all the bandwidth. And by the way, if the content owner uploads a ton of content and DOESNT do a deal first with Gootube, Gootube cant sell a nickels worth of advertising on the play pages."

"I believe the goal of seed funding is to validate (or disprove) an entrepreneur’s hypothesis + “de-risk” the opportunity."

redeye funding
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Great graph and post on Redeye VC on the value of bootstrapping + "failing cheaper" ouch : "I believe that the goal of seed funding is to validate (or disprove) an entrepreneur’s hypothesis, and thereby “de-risk” the opportunity. Early stage companies should raise enough money to allow them to iterate - as long as their initial hypothesis is still valid and they are making demonstrable progress towards lowering risk. Today’s model of failure is far more capital efficient in allowing entrepreneurs and their investors to do this than the old model. Companies used to waste millions of dollars of VC money – and entrepreneurs used to waste years of their lives – working on a failed hypothesis. Now, the cycle is much shorter."

Keyword there is "de-risking". Most ideas stay ideas. It is harder to execute. And even harder to scale. The real time feedback you get from actual shipping is invaluable in deciding "what next" whatever the structure around it/you. Expansionary capital needs to be able to value (rather than devalue) the "de-risk" factor ("how come there isn't more revenue?") : Less sophisticated investors (and entrepreneurs) prefer to be in a state of "continual (idea) build" - Namely planning the next new thing, and never executing. Within a larger business this is corporate strategy where you write plans, and identify deals that 95% of time don't happen. Anyway, the de-risk factor is important with the cheaper costs to get web prototypes launched; But ultimately an interim stage till the business consumes real resources, starts to produce and consume real financials, hoping to come out the other side with a winning (exitable) story.

---

Vincent: Okay, look, here's the deal. Man, you were gonna drive me around tonight, never be the wiser, but El Gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive, we're into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.

sxsw film attendees almost discover rettiwt

supersized lattes
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Nice List (found thru Eric Rice) of all the SXSW speakers that use Wordpress. Now I'm not sure how many speakers there are at the conference (ie the total universe of this little study) and not sure if this includes the real SXSW film crew like Harry Knowles (who was just on TPN) but it's a list, and blogging is about lists. So read it, and go wow, big deal. ControlY.

400K Mathletics X $99 Per Annum = 35% ninemsn.

ninemsn mathletics
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

With James Farmer hitting the valley, whose Edublogs.org is kickn ass, it's nice to see some creativity with smart economics and online sense from the new ninemsn management buying 35% of 3P the owner of Mathletics website. (good to see mr david coleman popping up in PBL:) Some soundbites from The Australian Business section (pg 21) today :

- PBL Media and ninemsn jointly purchased 35% of 3P the owner of Mathletics, a subscription driven website that has 400K students in Aust + NZ using it.
- Mathletics site has triple digit revenue growth
- Students compete against each other
- Heavy parent focus getting update emails.

Quote(s) from Tony Faure ninemsn CEO : "It's crazy to say you're all things to all people.. At times, you find other people to partner with to deliver a service you can't deliver as well as them. I think Mathletics fits very nicely in that context... focus on being what we can be good at and look for partners where we can't."

I also saw some other keywords "portal" and "competitive advantage" but you can spend your $1.20 on a Tuesday as I do ! Nice deal, well depending on the price, which isn't disclosed. Which would help with benchmarks for value of an Australian online "subscriber".

With Mathletics @ $99 per year with no apparent free or even monthly version (10 day free trial) that's a nice $4m in revenue from Aussie subs. With half of the home page usage from non-Aussie mathletes, that could be $6m-$8m revenue (prob less unless 100% pay $99) Either way : nice margins and throw in some ninemsn promotion, and you have some schweet valuation numbers and business. It's exactly the opposite and same driver as businesses such as MySpace and Facebook. But parents want to be in the loop, and know that their kid is getting ahead. $99 ahead. "Money well spent."

As amount invested also wasn't disclosed or mentioned in article, would be interesting (as always:) to know total amount + the promotion vs cash components of the investment. Ala the ninemsn/dstore deal in the ol'days. Full circle this industry. But in a good way. Lets hope we can build a positive ecosystem here, between distributors (portals) and builders of new features, sites and businesses. That's the gap, not enough new stuff. So go mathletics. $99, 35% nice.

YouTube Price/Revenue Acquisition Multiple = 100

cluttered desk
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I didnt know that. I know it was recently disclosed that in the YouTube acquisition $1.2B or similar of the $1.6B was "goodwill". Anyway, call your prospective financiers/acquirers : 100 times revenue.

Henry Blodget Seeking Alpha : "It is irrelevant what "revenue multiple" Google paid for YouTube. (Today's latest story, in the NYT, was tied to the apparently shocking discovery that Google paid 100x YouTube revenue.) YouTube was so young it hadn't even gotten around to generating revenue yet."

What Happened to $22B in Angel Funding ?

new bubuusity
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Love the Don Dodge analogy that angel investing is like gambling at the casino. House Wins. Any good punter knows they can beat the house though :) Until they take yours.

The Next Big Thing : "Exits have averaged $18B over the past 6 years while investments have averaged about $40B over the same time period. This can't go on forever. Or, maybe it can. Gamblers lose billions of dollars every year in Las Vegas...and have been happy to do so for over 50 years. VCs and Angels are big time gamblers and they love the game. One winner erases all the losers in their mind. I completely understand that because I think the same way."

Im not sure with the above dataset how it accounts for tech businesses that are ongoing concerns that create dividends for shareholders vs a capital gain exit ? ie there must be a chunk of businesses that dont float/flip or go out of business but are successful in that they produce dividends and increase in private market asset value ?

Product Development is What You Say No To

8C Competizione
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

If opportunity is what you say no to, and product development a tactical subset, Dave ex-Yahoo now Wink.com Product Guru Beach, definitely hits a nerve of truth with his One Thing Principle : "A Nutshell: any new online product or service should concentrate on one thing and one thing only. Do that one thing well and you may have a chance at success. The site or service should only be known for that one thing and there should be no question about what that one thing is."

I also like Mark Sigal's "I may not be right, but at least I am not confused." : "Specifically, this axiom suggests that it is more important to have a well-formed perspective on the whole picture than it is to have to be specifically correct about all of the piece parts.. This is a model that recognizes the value of speed over perfection, that understands the nature of rapidly evolving markets, which reward getting "something" out there, iterating and course-correcting in real-time, as opposed to planning in a vacuum and releasing product or strategy over longer time cycles. It requires, though, a continual calibration and re-calibration of the definition of the situation, practicing intellectual honesty about what the data is telling you and over-communicating with your constituency (customers, partners, employees, investors) the key takeaways."

can u video sms me ? no.

Sxsw: twitter just jumped the shark
Originally uploaded by baratunde.

Duncan Riley said it, I just agreed. Although I post this using wifi, global API's and fn slow broadband. It surprises no1 that no or very few good video ideas/companies have come out of Australia re 2.0. If you can't access normal video content on the net, and share it with your friends on the same connection, how can u imagine new types of video businesses ? Luckily twitter and SMS is something us Australians know about, and use what is it ? like billions of SMS' a month..

Da Dunc : "If there’s no WiFi there’s no Web 2.0 office, there’s no Web 2.0 culture, there’s no Web 2.0 development on the scale we see in the US. Whilst the Australian Government (and Opposition) remain obsessed with regulating the internet, nothing is being proposed or done to increase the affordability of broadband, cost being the main factor that limits the offering of free wireless in Australian cafes. When you continue to act like a backwater, it usually means if you aren’t already one, you soon will be."

And now there is geo-twittering.

geotwitter
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Well it's not actual geo-twittering, but it is kewl to see a google maps/twitter mashup and see Australia on the list. Splashcast : "Lately, we have been bitten by twitter bug. Well, I just had an obvious thought and somebody would have come up with it eventually. So incase no one has - here is my Twitter Google Maps mashup. It updates every minute and maps anybody in the public timeline who have set their location. It is interesting to see how Twitter has become a global phenomenon."

Some good twttr powertips here by Chris Penn : "Use a plugin like Feed Wordpress to auto-blog things in your best of Twitter feed."

How Will the Indians Fare at The Web 2.0 World Cup Cricket ?

SXSW Press Room
Originally uploaded by allen074.

Over this long weekend in Melbourne I've been researching Indian mid-tier (50-1000 employees skewed towards 5yrs+ comp sci education/experience), good at open source, B2C, web2 : Not the big BPO/B2B focused Satyams, Wipros and Tatas, or the elance $1000 dodgey script dudes. Anyone that has done or is doing anything (eg raj/internenment camp/loudspeakers podcast) with good dev groups in India (or even Eastern Europe) feel free to leave some recommendations.

So reading Om's personal piece on Delhi/India is very interesting : Esp that they are obsessed with cricket ! (my 2nd favourite book is Shantaram alot which was set in Indian slums/underground - official site here - being made into movie.) : "The streets where we played cricket are now jam-packed with the tiny Hyundais, Suzukis and Tatas. I wonder where my little nephew will learn how to play cricket, break his first window and get into a verbal joust with a grumpy old man, who never completely understands the joy of hitting a ball with a bat, sending it soaring in the sky. It reminds me of how East coast-centric baseball suddenly started finding new heroes in Houston, San Diego and Kalamazoo. But then this is part of economic growth.. My dear friend Sramana Mitra once told me that the organized retail and real estate were the best opportunities in India, not technology. On this trip, her words became all too real. There is a lot of U.S. capital that is flowing to India, mostly to invest in technology."

RK Blogs - Some interesting discussion on Shantaram.

“That’s why I like you, you know.”
“I thought you did not believe in love.”
“What do you mean, love ?”
“I ..I thought thats what you were talking about.”
“No, I said that’s why I like you.” she said laughing and looking up at moon. “But I do believe in love, everyone believes in love.”
“I am not so sure. I think lot of people have stopped believing in love.”
“People haven’t stopped believing in love. They haven’t stopped wanting to be in love. They just don’t believe in a happy ending anymore. They still belive in love, falling in love but they know now that…that most romances almost never end as well as they begin.”

Meta-Classifieds Search Ping Pong Battles.

FairfaxDomainZestimatesque
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

In Australia it's now folklore that the terrible twos-bill' mkt cap'd seek.com.au didn't go into other classifieds category outside employment. Even though it had the chance to, and their primary shareholder (Sir James) did thru investments in Carsales, and incubation of MyHome. The seek boyz had run their numbers, and played their hand thru the boom, held on thru the crash, and came out the other side with a beautiful view of Brighton. Neat.

Which led analysts to downgrade public newspapers like Fairfax (as well as News addressing these segments), who were falling behind in this space and are now spending, spending, spending to catchup. Well, planning to anyway. It's a very exciting time in online classifieds in 2007 both in Australia and globally. Headcounts and budgets way up, but many intitiaves are dealing with managing the existing business which is bursting at the seams with growth, using legacy technology, and are more focused on the paying customers, that being the larger classifieds sellers. Dealers. Agents etc. Who also have more choice than ever, esp when you factor in google's increasingly verticalised adword offerings, as well as new types of advertising. (display, video etc)

Every consumer and advertiser product innovation matters when there is this "competitive friction". Why waste time with dodgy stuff. I always wonder then why classifieds sites dont concentrate on a better "picture" experience of what is being sold. Why dont they present me with sexy slide shows of cars and properties, and let me tag, view, mashup these pics.. while this functionality is coming thru elements such as "watchlists" and "scrapbooks" - I'm also talking about better pictures fullstop. Better resolution. More pictures. Train private and dealer/agents taking the pics. In a world of video, 10megapixel cameras, and amazing online video/pic editing the picture experience of online classifieds should be low hanging fruit. ("geez the search on this site sux, but they have the best pictures")

Now the reality is headcount + technology = cost in order to complete new designated inititiave A. But sometimes pitching management ideas such as "Better Pictures." just aint sexy enough in a world of 3D Google/Microsoft Earth. And how do you quantify the value of better pictures ? (well u could do research but there's $10k for some baseline quant research that won't necessarily give a real result because it's hard to isolate factors driving post-click purchase optimisation as the classifieds site itself does'nt necessarily know which property/car sold , by when, and what caused it.. ok im really off topic now)
The US new school (Jobster and Zillow) are facing the same Gladiator/300 Battle in a much more traditional manner. Relegating fussball to a "SXSW thing" they've created a ping-pong super battle. Which Jobster won 4-3. Wonder if there will be a lunch-eater out there who takes a portfolio approach to classifieds or if each kid will stay to their part of the playyard.

Zillow Blog : "Jobster was kind enough to come to our house, so Zillow got home-court advantage. With more than 40 spectators cheering every big smash, and wincing at every unforced error, both competitors played intense, entertaining games in a well-balanced matchup. The action was fast and furious, as sidespin serves, edge-splitting slices, and smooth smashes were exchanged. We brought our A-game, and Jobster answered without fear. At the end of the day, Jobster went home with the trophy, 4 - 3. Congratulations to Jobster!"