Between growth, serving clients, hiring, dealing wiht investors and inventing new kinds of tools and social networks - I’ve been busy. This is one of the longest stretches I’ve gone without blogging and it feels good. Now I can read through my measly 2500 unread posts with fresh eyes.

But it’s not like I haven’t been paying attention and looking for fresh info, gossip and juicy tidbits.

Let me start off with…………

….. the ramifications of Cisco’s purchases of Five Across and Tribe’s technology have had a huge effect on my life and my company’s future. I’m making sure that whoever we do buisness with - understands me, what I’m about and that we’re not looking to ‘flip‘ Broadband Mechanics. But our valuation is up - which means we can get cash to help us build new kinds of tools, establish presences around the world - and help build out the distributed, inter-connected decentralized web. That’s a good thing. As long as they don’t even THINK they can push me out! I’ve recently run into 3 different founders who were pushed out - by their VCs. Whether they deserved it or not - business is unfair. That’s why I’m making sure - walking in the door - that anyone I talk to understands the base terms. I’m in charge.

Last.fm is looking pretty hot nowadays. This is one platform hat’s been methodically executing to plan, growing, deploying and monetizing.

Some friends have launched a new site - about Mobile+Advertising+Marketing called MobiAdNews. Check it out.

I’m checking out Freebase. It is NOT rdf. It’s JSON. I’ll let yah know what I think.

I’ll be speaking at Milia. Funny thing is - I was at the FIRST Milia and was given a condolence prize for Meet the MediaBand. You see - they told me to get all dressed up in a Penguin outfit (Tuxedo), Martin Scorsese was handing out the awards, it was broadcast live on French TV and we were up against the ‘Lourve’ as best ‘content’ product. Needless to say the Lourve’ won - but that product was ABOUT content and MediaBand IS content. So they gave me a condolence prize. But I didn’t get to meet Scorsese. However they did make the mistake of handing me the microphone, at which point I told them I didn’t care about their goofy prize anyway. Well that was 14 years ago. It took that long to get me invited back.

Cisco’s purtchase of Webex for $3.2B confirms my theory of Cisco moving up the stack - building out applications that become a new kind of infrastructure offering.   Dissintermnediating GYM.  Or maybe that was Om’s idea.
Somone should tell Andrew Baron that Digg is not a social network - but social media. I don’t mind the misuse of terms - but when you start cloning the clones and continue to mis use terms - its not helping anyone. Its great that Rocketboom is getting social. All software is social. But unless you adhere to a more or less strict, agreed upon formula - it’s not strictly called social neworking. IMHO.

I’m hoping that other marketing/brands/advertisers take the same approach as Tampax and become major players in this space - by pushing promotions and ads through the world of social networking.  I’m afraid that the Anheuser-Busch approach of building out their OWN social network - may not take off.  But we LOVE promotional sponsorship dollars.  Right?

Dan Farber likes Euan Semple’s rap ‘The easy way to Enterprise 2.0′. I do too. In fact I think I’d LOVE to hear Euan rap out a rap in his own unique style.

eVelvetRope, MyPureVideo, SiteScape hooks up with Novell, Jumpoff TV, The College Life, Microsoft Dynamics Live, connect.ivillage.com,

$4.9B for Fastweb. I remember when it first started in Milan.  We worked on NOW.com which is hot - in Hong Kong.  What geos around, comes around.

Note to self: make sure to make an appointment with thsi Yahoo-ster - a econSM.  Now if only there was an efficient way to make appointments?

For all the speculation on the Viacom-Google suit - here’s how I do the math:  Google gets YouTube for $1.6B - reserves $500M for lawsuits.  Google’s valuation goes up - what? $50B - $20B - even $10B.  Viacom sues Google for $1B.  Feh! They stilll got $9B left for all the other lawsuits and they’re STILL coming out ahead.  Hollywood gets cash, Wall St. rejoices.  Who’s hurt?  US!  This whole game doesn’t resolve anything.

OM notes that exactly five years ago the bubble burst.

Its Cricket time in India.  I wonder if Om has checked out ‘LetsCricket‘.

Final note - I’m noticing that lots of my blogging buddies have also been blogging a LOT less.  Please note the trend.  Bloggers get burned out.

Lots more to come - gotta go be a Dad now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.