July 20, 2005
Marc Cuban at AlwaysOn05
Fireside Chat with Marc Cuban, interviewed by Allen Delattre
At Always On 2005
July 20, 2005
I thought it was an interesting
discussion. Here are the points I found most noteworthy:
- blog search: I agree with Marc’s comments about the growing importance of
Blog Search, and his view that the aggregators will capture the market
value from the long tail of blog search. I personally like
www.blogpulse.com the best. Cuban’s new IceRocket seems to be direct
knockoff. Blogpulse gets my vote for best blog search engine not just
because my friends from Whizbang days were the founders of this service,
but because it has the best analytics and, unlike Technorati, it hasn’t
yet hit a scaling barrier. - Releasing movies simultaneously in all channels: I think that’s a great
idea, and it is exciting to see Marc Cuban in a position to lead the way
here. - Interactive TV and accountable TV advertising models: I agree with him that models for TV advertising are going to change, and that this will be enabled by interactive TV (and time shifting services like Tivo). The 30 second
spot is dying (George Gilder made a comment about this in a preceding
session at Always On), and new measurable forms of advertising are being
developed to take its place. I don’t expect it will be as simple as
pay-for-placement, but I do think internet and tv advertising models will
come together in some interesting blend over the next few years. - Dennis Rodman and Paris Hilton’s intuitive sense for media
manipulation: indeed! (I hope that previous reference doesn’t cause my blog
to become misclassified…).
Below are my (mostly raw) notes from this session.
continue reading the Marc Cuban at AlwaysOn05
Posted by barney on July 20, 2005 at 7:44 pm | 1 Comment
July 15, 2005
Badly BackBlogged, But Barney’s Back Blogging
After a period of intense work and travel, I’m finally gearing up to do some more blogging. However, so much has happened and there are so many blog entries I want to write about that I now feel severely backlogged. So it only seems fitting to resume my blogging activity by coining some new terms (?) for the feeling I have:
backblog: a set of topics that must be blogged but are now behind in the queue.
backblogged: the feeling a blogger gets when life is happening so fast that you wonder if you can ever work through the backblog.
Now my question is: where to start — with the current or the previous items?
Since currency is everything in the blogosphere, I think I’ll start with today, and hope that new topics come in slow enough that I can hit the older, but hopefully a little timeless, topics.
Posted by barney on July 15, 2005 at 12:40 pm | 2 Comments
June 26, 2005
Allen Morgan’s Blog in Time Magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites
Time Magazine published a list of 50 Coolest Websites for 2005. Recognizing the growing importance of blogs, they broke out blogs as a separate segment within that list (50 Coolest Websites 2005: Blogs).
My Mayfield colleague Allen Morgan’s Blog was listed as the coolest blog/website for entrepreneurs:
Allen Morgan, managing director at Mayfield—a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California—backer of Beatnik, PlanetOut, Tribe and Pluck —guides entrepreneurs on how to pitch ideas and get financing. The recent “10 Commandments” series on how to handle those critical meetings with VCs is a must-read.
I agree with Time’s endorsement — Allen’s 10 commandments series is great. I also agree with Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck, who commented to Allen, “I am particularly impressed that you pulled off such a feat with a mean-time-between posts of five weeks.” It shows that focus and quality can matter more than freshness even in the blogosphere; at least this true for media critics.
Allen was actually an inspiration for me to start blogging, right around the time he convinced me to join Mayfield. I imagined that I would have lots of content about insights from an Entrepreneur in Residence, kind of like an entrepreneurial undercover agent sharing how things really happen on the other side of the funding table. When I later brainstormed with Allen about how to achieve both substance and discretion in such a blog, Allen summarized along the following lines: “As long as you don’t specifically identify any of the companies, entrepreneurs, or Mayfield partners, and you only say good things about Mayfield, you should feel free to blog about anything you like!”
Posted by barney on June 26, 2005 at 8:49 pm | No Comments