Venture Capital bloggers have a uniquely targeted audience of entrepreneurs interested in what they have to say. These Venture Capitalists write about technology, entrepreneurship, investing, the computer industry, and their random exploits.
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Yahoo's Shine: Yawn, Yes, But a Smart Idea [Silicon Alley Insider]
read moreYHOOHenry BlodgetMon, 31 Mar 2008 04:26:00 -0500
Yahoo (YHOO) has launched a chick site called Shine aimed at 25-54 year-old women. While it's hard to generate enough excitement about this even to click on the link, it's a smart move:
First, Yahoo appears to have done Shine well. Note the fresh, clean, blog-like look. If they would only move the "from Yahoo" logo off the header (and the site off the yahoo.com domain), visitors might think they'd stumbled across a cool new unaffiliated site (unaware that they had been directed there by the Yahoo traffic fire hose.)
Second, as Yahoo has demonstrated with other focused, branded content plays--OMG, TechTicker--its distribution platform is so powerful that it can enter mature, crowded categories and immediately be a player. These forays don't (or at least shouldn't) cost much--a handful of editors and writers--and each should immediately generate at least a few million pageviews a month (and that's if they bomb).
Third, starting such sites is cheaper than buying them--and as the hopelessly uncool iVillage has demonstrated, success appears to be transitory.
So even though we can't imagine that we'll be reading Shine, we imagine others will--especially when it gets a big, fat link on the Yahoo home page.
Blogfriends shuts down [The Equity Kicker]
read moreBloggingnicMon, 31 Mar 2008 03:54:31 -0500
Social feedreader and Facebook application Blogfriends has closed down. You can read their announcement here.
This is a great shame. I have been a big fan of the service since it launched, it has brought efficiency, variety and serendipity to my feedreading to the extent that I have pretty much stopped using any other reader.
Now I guess I will have to find a new one.
Social feedreader and Facebook application Blogfriends has closed down. You can read their announcement here.
This is a great shame. I have been a big fan of the service since it launched, it has brought efficiency, variety and serendipity to my feedreading to the extent that I have pretty much stopped using any other [...]
Social networking goes to the long tail [The Equity Kicker]
read moreSocial networksnicMon, 31 Mar 2008 03:45:44 -0500
I have written before about how whilst the growth of the leading socnets is flattening niche socnets seems to be accelerating and the success of Ning is further evidence of that trend.
In both traffic and socnets they host they have grown 5-6x in a year, and a quick bit of maths shows just how far they have travelled down the long tail. At 3.5m uniques in Feb and 200,000 socnets on the site, the average Ning socnet has 17.5 unique visitors. The maths is crude as it assumes all the visitors are only members of one Ning socnet and I would also expect that rather like blogs many of these socnets are idle, but my point stands even if the 17.5 is an order of magnitude out.
If the trend to niche socnets continues then data portability will start to become more and more important, which will in itself unleash another wave of innovation.
I have written before about how whilst the growth of the leading socnets is flattening niche socnets seems to be accelerating and the success of Ning is further evidence of that trend.
These charts from Techcrunch tell the story.
In both traffic and socnets they host they have grown 5-6x in a year, and a quick bit [...]
I'm not sure the answer (I want it back on my blog) is correct, but we are in the middle of yet another massive decentralization of data - this time very personal. Loic's identity and content is spread all over the web (as is mine.) He wants it back in one place - one that belongs to him.
If we only had 10 web services participating in this grand decentralization of Loic, it would be no big deal. But there are now thousands - all which want to be able to play with all the others. With each new unit of data, and each new service, it gets a little messier (and a little more fun.)
Motionbox Goes HD [Silicon Alley Insider]
read morePeter KafkaSun, 30 Mar 2008 23:01:00 -0500
Video-sharing and storage site Motionbox is now offering some users an HD option. The NY-based service's premium members, who pay $30 a year, will be able to upload and play HD videos; the company promises that the site's free users will also see a noticable upgrade in the quality of their standard-def videos.
We don't think conventional video-sharing sites like YouTube and the YouTube-wannabees need to offer HD, but this makes sense for Motionbox: It's targeting users who are shooting home movies and the like with "near-HD" cameras, and want a place to share those clips with a handful of their friends and family.
Gearhead details from the release:
The HD player takes full advantage of Adobe Flash Player's capabilities and the exceptional H.264 video format. Major advances to Motionbox's server-based video rendering engine enable Web-based editing of full 1080p video, with AVCHD support coming soon.
read moreUncategorizedJeffSun, 30 Mar 2008 22:56:44 -0500
Maybe Hollywood should look at the video game industry to see what is selling to American audiences. Despite Hollywood’s best efforts, there is no audience for a movie that portrays American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines as criminals, thugs, and dishonorable cowards, and Hollywood’s version of “dramatics” is clearly not what audiences want. One would think that Hollywood would stop producing movies that clearly have no mass market appeal, but apparently the only applied aspect of capitalism in that town has to do with salaries.
Meanwhile over in video games, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare continues it’s winning streak, landing in 2nd place on Xbox 360, 3rd place on PS3, and 3rd place for PC games for week 10 of 2008. CoD4 was also the top selling game for the month of Feb, shipping 296,200 units, which at retail is about $15 million in sales, and the title has been out for 8 months. Activision originally projected they would sell 7 million units of this title, translating into a total take of $350 million.
Friday’s No. 7 Stop-Loss fell a spot to 8th after it opened to only $1.7 million Friday and Saturday from a limited 1,291 plays. It eked out a $4.5M weekend. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn’t expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. “It’s not looking good,” a studio source told me before the weekend. “No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”
Maybe Hollywood should look at the video game industry to see what is selling to American audiences. Despite Hollywood’s best efforts, there is no audience for a movie that portrays American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines as criminals, thugs, and dishonorable cowards, and Hollywood’s version of “dramatics” is clearly not what audiences want. One would [...]
read moreFirms & FundsDan PrimackSun, 30 Mar 2008 20:45:35 -0500
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. has closed its latest mega-buyout fund with $17.6 billion. That’s a bit short of its $18 billion hard target, but nearly triple the $6 billion it raised for its previous effort in 2003. Much of it has already been invested.
PrivateEquityOnline first reported the news (sub req), and we’ve since confirmed it with a KKR spokesman. KKR also is in the process of raising €8 billion for its third dedicated European fund. Most of the new fund — called KKR 2006 Fund Private Investors – is earmarked for North American investments, but some will be opportunistically disbursed elsewhere.
For more information on KKR and the fund, here’s a backgrounder from one of its limited partners: KKR2006.pdf.
As a sidenote, buyout and mezzanine funds have now raised over $60 billion in 2008.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. has closed its latest mega-buyout fund with $17.6 billion. That’s a bit short of its $18 billion hard target, but nearly triple the $6 billion it raised for its previous effort in 2003. Much of it has already been invested.
PrivateEquityOnline first reported the news (sub req), and we’ve since confirmed it [...]
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Nigerian Explains Subprime Scam to U.S. [Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed]
Given some of their nationals' fondness for financial scams, there is something blackly comedic -- and possibly even downright appropriate -- about a letter from someone in Nigeria to the New York Times purporting to explain the U.S.'s subprime/credit issues. Then again, there is no denying that some Nigerians have demonstrated a real competency in this general area.
To the editor:
This financial monster is not the fault of Wall Street, or of some shadowy conspiracy created in basements and back rooms. It should have been fully expected from the time the deficits-don’t-matter attitude took hold in Washington.
The only reason the monster didn’t arrive sooner is that the Federal Reserve was able to manage interest rates, thereby keeping American households spending and borrowing. This, however, only delayed it, as the dollar so diminished the relative size of the American economy that global corporations no longer needed to cater to the American consumer.
Why are we now standing by idly as the government spends billions upon billions of dollars it does not have, trying to further delay the inevitable crisis? Why pass the crisis onto our children and grandchildren? Daniel Mueller
Lagos, Nigeria, March 24
Or, at the very least, why not send a fraction of that subprime bailout money to a confidante of the widow of the late General Sanni Abacha of Nigeria, who died and now his $80-million is with her, but ... well, you know the rest.
And just because it reminded me of it, here is a great video of Ze Frank performing a Nigerian email at TED a few years ago. Yes, performing a scam email. It's good.
U2 Deja Vu: Live Nation Pays To Play, Again (LYV) [Silicon Alley Insider]
read moreLYVPeter KafkaSun, 30 Mar 2008 20:26:00 -0500
Concert promoter Live Nation has signed a 12-year deal with U2 to exclusively promote the band's concerts, sell merchandise, and operate the group's website. In return the band gets a heap of cash, likely more than $100 million.
This deal sounds vaguely like the high-profile deal Live Nation (LYV) made last year to sign Madonna, but it's not. In that case, Live Nation was also grabbing the rights to release new Madonna albums, but here Universal Music Group will continue to release U2's new songs. Basically, the WSJ notes, it's pretty much a case of U2 converting Live Nation's weakness into a large check:
For U2, the arrangement represents a windfall that results ultimately
from Live Nation's newly embattled position and its resulting need for
loyal allies. The promoter is effectively paying the band to lock in
the status quo: Live Nation or its predecessors have produced and
