I ran a fever all night last night and tossed and turned and sweat like crazy. I went in and out of sleep and had some wild dreams in which I saw the future of the Internet. I wish I could hit the rewind button on my brain and get them back. I think they were pretty good.
This isn’t news to many of you but I feel like posting about it anyway. There’s a community here at AVC and what goes on here is less and less about me every day. Thanks to HockeyDino for suggesting I post about this.
The community that has developed here are AVC is thousands strong. Way more than the 967 who have joined MyBlogLog here at AVC. I’ll tell you about some of the community members.
There’s Jackson and Tony Alva, two people who have come along from my real world to my web world. I’ve known Jackson since the day he was born and Tony for about thirty years. They are best friends and have been for almost as long as I’ve known Tony. I can always rely on Jackson to be the contrarian/grump on digital media and lend some much needed humor to the comments. I can always count on Tony for his right of center hawkish views and reasoned take on everything. My other brother Rod comments a bit from time to time, largely on the music posts.
There’s Howard who has turned blog commenting into an art form. He reads and comments on more blogs than anyone else I know. Howard took the opposite path from Jackson and Tony, he’s gone from my web world to my real world.
There’s Scotty The Body who left his first comment on 10/29/03 and his most recent on yesterday’s post about being sick. Scotty’s not the most frequent commenter but he’s the most durable. Scott’s also gone from my web world to my real world and is the first member of this community that I didn’t already now that I met in person.
But Scotty is not the frequent commenter with the most tenure. I think (but don’t really know) that that title goes to Simon who posted his first comment on 10/1/03 and his most recent on 2/4/07. Simon is from australia and he loves the web, technology, and music. He’s a natural for this community and I am glad to have him.
How about Grandegress? I fell like its Point/Counterpoint with him. He’s always got a contrarian view, whether its about politics, technology, society, economics, or basically anything. The thing of it is that Grandegress is hard to argue with because he makes a lot of sense even when articulating a polar opposite view. It took me months to figure out that I knew Grandegress. He’s an entrepreneur we backed in the mid 90s and one of the best we ever backed.
This community is full of entrepreneurs, of course, and one of the most vocal is Erik who has been hanging around AVC since early 2006 and has emerged as one of the most frequent commenters, particularly on issues around the web, technology, entertainment, and media. That’s not surprising because he ran entertainment at one of the top Internet portals and now is doing a startup in an adjacent market.
Given that everything that is said in this community is here for posterity, it’s a good thing that my lawyer for over 15 years, JayR, hangs out here too. But he’s not highlighting comments that are going to get us in trouble. He’s adding to the discussion, particularly when it heads toward music, sports, and family. It’s good to have you Jay.
At this point, you are probably saying, wow this community is a men’s club. Unfortunately that’s largely true. There are plenty of women in the AVC MyBlogLog community (including a number of pretty faces that are just front ends for spam blogs and dating sites) but for whatever reason, only about 25 of the last 500 comments on this blog were made by woman (with screennames it’s always a bit hard to tell). KarenE has been a faithful commenter since early 2005 but we only hear from her about once a month. Candice has been commenting for about as long as KarenE with about the same amount of frequency. The GothamGal, my girls, and my mom have never once commented on this blog. I’ve seen comments recently from Susan Wu, Lindsay Campbell, and longtime reader Sandy. But for whatever reason, the “read to comment” ratio for the women in this community is much lower than the men.
I could go on and on, but this is like an Oscar night speech. I am going to piss off all of you loyal community members who aren’t getting called out. I am sorry. I am going to write more about this topic in the coming weeks and hopefully I’ll recognize more of you in those posts.
And I am going to put some more community tools on this blog soon that showcase what is really going on here. As HockeyDino said in the email that inspired this post “I’ve met many cool people from being on your blog, and have benefited in different ways.” That’s great to hear and I am going to try to make more of that kind of thing happen.
The Gotham Gal has had the bronchial flu for the past three days and I’ve got it now.
It sucks.
I’ve read all the chatter in the tech blog community about Steve Jobs’ Thoughts On Music and I’ve read the comments on this blog and elswhere. The reaction to Thoughts On Music range from ecstatic (mine) to cynical and jaded. There are many who doubt Jobs’ declared preference for selling unprotected music. I don’t doubt it, but I think he can and must do more to drive this to its logical conclusion. Here are three things Apple must do immediately to build a vibrant online music distribution business where more than 3% of all music is bought online.
1) Start selling all music that can be sold unprotected that way immediately. The entire eMusic catalog is available in mp3. Those artists should be available in unprotected formats on iTunes today.
2) Don’t force the consumer to use a specific format. iTunes should offer music in whatever format the purchaser wants it in; AAC (Jobs’ preferred format), mp3, flac, and any other format that is popular.
3) Build a robust API into the iTunes music store so bloggers and music services can resell music from iTunes on the web. Today if you link to iTunes music, the person who clicks on the link goes through this horribly unfriendly un-Apple experience where they are forced to launch iTunes. Why is that necessary? Just authenticate the buyer and download the music via the web.
We’ve been locked in DRM wars and format wars for too long. And the online music business has suffered from walled gardens that don’t interoperate the way web services do. It’s time to change those things. Apple has led the way to date. They must finish the job.
And I had to cut it off at the bottom because my screen isn’t big enough to capture all the chatter. It’s pretty clear the tech blog community is anti DRM and Steve Jobs is our hero today.
I’ve said a few unsavory things on this blog about Apple and it’s lock on digital music. I won’t buy music on iTunes. I buy CDs from Amazon and mp3s from eMusic. I thought Jobs was using DRM to build a monopoly on digital music. Either I was wrong or Jobs has changed his mind. Doesn’t matter.
Read his "Thoughts on Music". He nails the issue and I sure hope the music industry wakes up and smells the coffee.
Wow. The end of DRM is coming quicker than even I thought it would. Last fall I said on this blog that at least one major label would sell music in unprotected mp3 format within two years.
A couple weeks ago I posted that there were rumors flying at Midem (the big music conference) that at least one major music label was going to sell music in mp3 format.
I thought the reason the labels were going to do this was to get out of the grip that iTunes has on digital music distribution. If you buy a song with iTunes DRM (called fairplay) on it, you can’t play it on any other digital music device. That has given iTunes a near monopoly on the sale of digital music. The only other music store that has any real share is eMusic which sells in mp3 format so their music can be played on an iPod.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs, the person who showed the labels how to sell music successfully online, has come out in favor of dropping DRM and selling in unprotected mp3 format. That’s awesome and I would have never expected that to happen. When Apple is willing to give up a huge competitive advantage in recognition of the issues that DRM is causing its customers, well that has to get everyone’s attention. It sure got mine.
Update: Here is Jobs’ letter to the music industry.
I don’t have the new Bright Eyes new record, Cassadaga, yet. It’s coming in early April. There’s no link to Cassadaga because it’s not up on Amazon for pre-order yet. But I found the single on the Hypemachine yesterday via My Science Project. It’s called Four Winds and I love the fiddle that plays throughout the song. Enjoy.
As many of you know and Rick points out in the comments, this was ad was created as part of a "user generated ad" campaign and the winner were some college kids who Rick says made the ad for $12. That’s awesome. More on the campaign and how well it worked here.
And for those who don’t have flash and can’t watch this commercial (like Jackson), the ad I am referring to is the Doritos ad called Live The Flavor.
I saw the news reports last night that Reid Hoffman has hired a CEO to run LinkedIn.
The headline to the VentureBeat story I linked to is:
LinkedIn’s chief executive steps down
I’d like to suggest a new word to describe what really happened. Reid ‘stepped up’ to the role of chairman. It’s not a demotion or some kind of forced management change as the VentureBeat story alluded to (since updated):
Sometimes, venture capitalists agree to invest only on certain terms,
and they may have done so last month only on condition of a change in
executive — but we aren’t certain of this.
Stepping up is hard. But it’s often the right thing to do. The timing is critical. It’s generally not a smart thing to "step up" before the product/service and business model is figured out. Entrepreneurs are better at the tinkering style of management that is required to get the product/service and business model right. Hired managers are often better at executing it once the plan is set.
So judging from where LinkedIn is right now, my sense is that Reid picked a good time to "step up". According to OM at GigaOm:
Hoffman will remain chairman of the company, and will take an additional title of president of products.
That’s pretty clear that he’s not leaving the company. And that’s important. Look at all the founders coming back to their companies these days to fix them. When founders leave completely, it’s often not good for their companies.
We had a similar management change in our portfolio last year which I think was handled exceptionally well. Dave Morgan, the founder of TACODA and its CEO for its first five years, handed over the CEO job to Curt Viebranz, who is an experienced media company manager and had been COO for the prior two years and a board member since inception.
TACODA went through a number of iterations during the first five years but by the middle of last year was solidly on a plan to build the leading behaviorally targeted advertising network. Dave "stepped up" and Curt is now running the company. But Dave hasn’t left as anybody close to the company or the online media business will attest. He’s doing different jobs for the company and he’s still contributing that magic element that only a founder can bring.
So I hope Reid will do the same. I know he’s been quietly building one of the best portfolios of angel investments out there and he is probably headed to investing full time at some point. But as long as LinkedIn is an independent company, he should keep one foot in the door there. It’s important to step up instead of stepping down.
