Facebook's Initial Privacy Offering

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

My Wall and Wall Street are about to become an item: we're all going public, and you'll have to issue a profit warning each time I unlike you nth kitten picture.

Yet Facebook Initial Public Offering remains a non-event: Facebook has been milking our relationship from the beginning, and even with his 11M+ friends, Mark Zuckerberg has never been much of a philanthropist. The question was "when", and the answer is "now".

Now the other question remains: until when?

It doesn't have to come from the next big thing (a 4D, 5G meshroom cloud? the SOPAtriot Act?): remaining at the top happens to be difficult, even for a free, pervasive platform. And even a 800 pound gorilla can get off your back (I recently mentioned the potential Tripodization of Facebook: "Cloud Portability"). Furthermore, money won't do you much good without a vision. Look at Rupert Murdoch, who after losing over half a billion bucks on MySpace, delivers his pearls of conservative wisdom* for free over Twitter. And speaking of doing good: Google started being evil after its IPO...

... Come to think of it: Zuck started as a bad guy.

mot-bile 2012

*if such a thing exists.

Mating season for media : Steve & Ruppert / Time Inc, Conde Nast, Hearst & Meredith

Gossip of the day : Hearst heart Time heart Meredith heart Conde Nast. It heard it through the newsvine, or rather the NYT : "Group of Magazine Publishers Is Said to Be Building an Online Newsstand", the fabled "iTunes for magazines". The New York Times itself being an item on the Amazon Kindle platform*.

The previous day, the same NYT had a story about that flirt between Murdoch and Balmer : jealous of Google's curves, Baldy would like to keep the moghul's treasures for himself : only Bing would be able to reach inside its pages**.

In Korea, courting may turn predatorial : antitrust laws allow press groups to develop bigger TV channels. Big fishs are literally venturing into / vulturing around the pond.

The hate / love relationship between traditional media and new media remains in this transitional phase when nothing seems to be granted, even for major stars. No one seems to be sustainably bankable.

So major studios people tend to cling to behaviors they feel comfortable with : investing in the latest technologies to appear up to date, promising blockbusters with Ocean's Twenty Six castings... but they still have no script, no storyboard, and no director whatsoever.

So what they're basically trying to do is to put everybody together for one night in some sort of Kodak Theater, betting on favorable buzz outside and last minute deals inside, forcing smiles and spotlights to the point no outsider may notice the collection of butcher knives.


mot-bile 2009

* Speaking of platforms and music : Brian Stelter also mentions in his article YouTube's Vevo music video platform.
** "News Corp. Weighs an Exclusive Alliance With Bing" (NYT - 20091124)

MySpace, My Yahoo!, My Sun

It didn't take long for Vulture Capitalists to start hovering above semelless Yahoo!*

For 25% to 30% of the bride, Ruppert Murdoch offers paper, and boy doesn't he have a lot of the toilet kind (tabloids, MySpace shares...) ?

Yahoo! may follow another lead, but this clearly reminds us the maverick netco has become a media among others, struggling to adapt to the times and spaces. And cheaper** than Dow Jones / WSJ... traditional papers with flesh on 'em.


* see "Near Failed Communications" (20060619)
** people are mentioning $9-12 bn (based on Y!'s valuation), but Sir Ruppert would have spent about half a billion overall.

MySpace France : dial fr for Murdoch

MySpace France opened their beta version on the web*. Un-translated US banners feebly try to animate an almost empty shell but you can count on Fox Interactive Media for tying a few knots with local media partners.
In France, Murdoch's blog machine cannot leverage on a strong News Corp presence and worse, it will face a strong leader with a rather newscorpish look and feel : Skyblog sounds like a Sky branch and succesfully targets the illiterate. Yes, the global deal with Google can bring audience, but not substance... and especially not MySpace's trademark podcastable broadband-broadchested-six-pack-daily-mirrorish substance.
MySpace France must be finalizing some partnerships with a cellco / M-VNO, and certainly with TV / radio channels. I don't expect Arte / France Culture executives to be shortening their holidays.


* dial http://fr.myspace.com/ for Murdoch ; myspace.fr seems to be auctioned by its opportunist owner.

Cyworld vs MySpace... SKT has it both ways

Is it the sky falling over MySpace and Ruppert Chicken Little Murdoch or just acorns from his new Korean partner in the mobile arena* ? A few weeks after Helio, SK Telecom are about to launch Cyworld in the US.
Right now, the beta version** only hosts 364 clubs but totoris are already up for grabs and unlike in Korea, there is a clear focus on the younger generations. Besides, there is more (Mini)room for actual pictures and actual goods for your totoris vs the usual virtual Minimes and virtual goods... which should mean a more direct broadband war to News Corp's podcasting giant. The question is : how long before cyworld gets mobile in the US too ?
Next stops for the cyworld train : Europe, South America and India.



* about the Helio-MySpace deal, see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220)
** http://us.cyworld.com/

Digital rights and sports wrongs

Netcos, telcos, cellcos, ISPs... Look at them fight for the rights to broadcast the 2006 FIFA World Cup and other major sports events. Did they only read the labels beforehand ? Did they even check what came in the package under the nice wraps ?
Partners and official sponsors are associated to the successes and failures, the world records as well as the criminal ones. Eventjackings by terrorists ? I'll take it. A Julifest project by German and Polish neo-Nazis ? On the house. Athletes on steroïds ? Don't mention it (official MLB broadcasters ESPN don't : actually, they will even air a 10-part series on the rise and rise of pristine Barry Bonds...).
Much food for thought, a lot of trash for sewers, but as an accomplice, you cannot join the bashing crew.
Sir Ruppert found the right angle. As usual, it's not the moral one : after joining News Corp, the MySpace community kind of turned into a web tabloïd for the masses by the masses. Because bashing became the new National Pastime, here's your DYI O'Reilly Factor, your own ultimate real-TV-over-you-name-it.
MySpace Mobile will be launched at about the same time as ESPN mobile*. On the same Sprint 3G EV-DO network. Expect a full coverage of the World Series.

* see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220) and "SK-Earthlink - postponing and smartcasting" (20051021)

Branson vs Murdoch : Virgin Mobile + NTL in the UK, and more to come

Since Sir Richard confessed in China, Virgin Mobile had to get specific today : "The Board of Virgin Mobile Holdings (UK) plc (‘Virgin Mobile’ or ‘the Company’) confirms that it has received an approach from NTL Incorporated that may or may not lead to a formal offer being made for the Company."
UK's leading cableco (after wolfing Telewest down) could help Virgin build a significant competitor to BSkyB, which had already been hunting for preys in the telecom sector (some game with a little more flesh than OneTel).
NTL already purchased Virgin.net a few years ago. They need a brand and should offer more than their initial $1.4bn to please Virgin shareholders.
From Branson's point of view, focusing on such core assets as branding or retailing could make sense. And this partnership should lead to other ones, even more devastating for the competition. The sooner the better : new M-VNOs are popping up across the world and Sir Richard is bound to harrass Sir Rupert the other side of the Atlantic, not to mention Australia or even China.

Skype scrapers

I wonder what Li Ka-Shing's Hutchison Whampoa will do of their 5% holding in Skype. Since Skype are into big packets and Hutch into logistics, the Hong-Kong mogul could start shipping voice on containers.
I wonder what Ruppert Murdoch would do if he were in his shoes. He too is rumored to covet Skype, and I guess he should be interested in a Voice over IP concept. As a over-hip competitor to "The Village Voice", that is.
Skype scrapers usually want to rise above the crowd. To the risk of becoming perfect targets. Ask Thomas Middlehof.

Why, bro ? WiBro !

Doc Jacobs plays it the Murdoch way : Qualcomm purchased a 700 MHz TV channel in order to launch multimedia broadcasting services using his FLO (Forward Link Only) technology. Why dub a techno "flaw" ? Ask William Gates III : aftersale services embedded in the very name - Microsoft should have made such a brilliant move much earlier.
This side of the Hangang, SK Telecom will proceed with their DMB agenda (launch mid 2005), and announce WiBro services around mid 2006. Why bro and not max ? Ask Craig Barrett : intel's CEO his trying to have LG by his side and see both standards converge the US way.
The key to standardization remains division.