There has been enough talkedabout eBay’s $1 Billion writedown of Skype. Multiple perspectives have been provided by various experts.

Here’s the top 3 things I took away from this:
1. Google has the patience for the business model to be formed Ebay DOES NOT. There is a possible business model for Skype (which BTW is making $300+ Million annually), beyond the simple Skype Out and Skype In. But, eBay’s management team is too short sighted (read quarterly numbers driven) to have the patience to focus enough energy, time and effort on it. While many analystsand every other so called expert has been clamouring on about  how Google’s YouTube acquisition is working out, there’s no sense of impatience from Google.

2. Google has time on its side, eBay does not. There’s a high growth business that’s rising all the other boats. eBay does not have that luxury. Its core business are in much lower growth modes.

3. The value of NOT providing wall street with guidance is more apparent here.
I was pleased to see both Google Transit’s graduation and YouTube’s announcement that U of Calwill be putting their lectures on the video site. As Google thinks – I have a new product.

How are you going to make money? Dont know and right now dont care. Maybe YouTube will start to charge users who want the lectures online and share 60% of that revenue with U of Cal (who are getting something for nothing at all. Or maybe the transit authorities will pay Google to put their routes by default and offer their users 20% off. Transit authorities get more passengers and Users benefit with the discount. Google makes money either ways.

Google does not care because they have no reason to worry about Q3 numbers or Q4 guidance. EBay does.

What do you think?

Update (9/6): Paul Monica discusses Google / YouTube a year later at CNNFN. Some relevant notes:

Despite YouTube’s formidable market share lead over other established
online video sites such as Metacafe, Break.com, Heavy and Dailymotion,
even more challengers have cropped up to battle YouTube, many focusing
on niche interests. Will Ferrell has contributed his talents to online
comedy site FunnyorDie.com while Harry Shearer of “This is Spinal Tap!” and “The Simpsons” fame is a main creative force behind MyDamnChannel. There’s even a YouTube-esque site for the more pious online video viewer called GodTube.

Online video advertising is still a tiny fraction of the overall ad market but it is expected to grow at a healthy clip the next few years.

Still, one problem for advertisers is that while the explosion of
online video has created a vast amount of content, much of it has
little, if any potential value to them.

“The business models in online video are currently
upside down. It’s a terrible business to be in right now,” said Ashwin
Navin, co-founder and president of BitTorrent, a company that runs a popular peer-to-peer file sharing service for videos and other content.

He said that unless more online video companies
adopt peer-to-peer networks like his to reduce bandwidth costs, online
video will be “unprofitable for many publishers.”

Opting out
of opting in. 

Vestigial email and alerts accumulating in a well organized
but completely ignored inbox hierarchy?

Time to walk-the-walk with some housecleaning, and put the
slow-to-adopt on notice. Things are reaching critical mass. Time to evolve or
move on down the road. 

·        
E-mail, Ezines, Newsletters & Alerts: Opt out.

1.   
Get a feed if still interested in the content.

2.   
No feed available. Goodbye. It’s tough love.

o  
Marketing Sherpa
stays.

o  
Surprisingly, Adobe Edge
Newsletter is going . . .(tough call)

o  
Absolute Write.
Adieu.

o  
Word of the
Day: Perdure.

o  
Goodbye Facebook alerts. Hello Facebook feed.

o  
Cricket
Highlights: It’s a bowler!

o  
Daily Gadget, where’d you come from? Welp, cya!

o  
Signature
Hardware: Gone down the drain. (Beyond spam, imagine all of the trees saved
by using online catalogs.)

Email is still a killer app., especially for personal and business communication, but
inboxes clogged with ancient opt-ins being redirected to the trash doesn’t do
anything to improve the situation.  

This is a very democratic process. By opting out, you are
voting on content you will receive, and sending a message to the content
provider that (if they’re paying attention) they are losing market share
delivering content this way.

The
Bottom Line: If it’s not in the feed reader, who has time for it?

Caught this one on Bill
Hartzer. According to a survey by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst &
Young LLP, venture capitalists are seeking to tap into new markets.

Global deals having to do with Web 2.0 / Social
Media are up a 14% in the first half of 2007. Other notable numbers and trends
for the 1^st half of 2007 include: 

·        
$465 Million invested in companies in the US

·        
New England may be emerging as the new Web 2.0 /
Social Media Hotspot

·        
$464.2 million into 101 deals worldwide in the
1st half of 2007
(highest 6 month total & more than 7% compared to 1^st half of
2006)

·        
Web 2.0/Social Media deals climbed 14% worldwide

·        
$52 million was used in 20 European deals

·        
Israeli companies raised US$15 million in five
deals

·        
United Kingdom had the most investor activity
with a seven deals accounting for US$22 million

·        
Most of Web 2.0 / Social Media deals focused on
“Enterprise 2.0″ using Web 2.0 technologies to improve business functions

·        
U.S. dominates the Web 2.0 market

        ·        
China posted just nine Web 2.0 deals, accounting
for US$41 million in investment 

The investment figures
reported are “based on aggregate findings of VentureOne’s proprietary research.
This data was collected by surveying professional venture capital firms,
through in-depth interviews with company CEOs and CFOs, and from secondary
sources.

The Bottom Line: Money Talks!

This
is exciting news! John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing is launching the Coaching
Excellence Series with Guy Kawasaki,
John Battelle and Michael Gerber.

These are live
telesessions about growing
a business, discovering dreams, creating rich customer experiences, Web 2.0
and more in a controlled Q&A interview. Archives will be available for
podcast. 

Future interviewees
include David Allen, Dr Ivan Misner, Tim Ferris and Seth Godin. I just signed up to join
in the conversation.

Robert
Scoble thinks Apple has a PR problem because people on Twitter are
reporting problems with iPhones that were not unlocked and subject to getting bricked.

Saul
Hansell of The New York Times predicts war as Steve Jobs takes on hackers
unlocking iPhones from the AT&T networking, downloading unofficial
applications, or otherwise modifying the device.

Isn’t this whole iPhone thing starting to resemble a
Stephen King novel?

Part of the problem appears to be how the iPhone is
being met in the market. Sold as a cell phone, it’s being perceived by many technorati as a hand held computer, and hackers
can’t resist hacking even with a $399 iPhone. We don’t advocate unlocking
your iPhone. 

Brian Oberkirch offers a slide show on Designing
for Hackability, asking questions like: How can we make social networks
more hackable? Portable? Efficient?

Here
are some interesting links as the battle heats up: 

Think
Different: Think Again Apple where Apple gets a video hacked.

Podcast of TALKSHOW

Nokia
is working the buzz

The
Bottom Line: We’re keeping an eye on the Apple share price.

<img src="/images/64360-56413/CELL.jpg” border=”0″ width=”185″>

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying
from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept.
18, 2007, before a
packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your
Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave
advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

“Experience is what you get when you did not get what you wanted”.

Mood: Connected & Hungry!

Gear: Champion SF 49er’s jersey

Listening to: Pandora 

Reading Zen Habits (tagline: Simple Productivity) and
realized the blog name, and its tag are an oxymoron. The point of Zen, or even
better, the point to Zen, is to lose the habits of our identity creation to
realize the true nature of our consciousness (one interpretation).

This isn’t to discount
the site. They offer many simple-to-adopt lifestyle to improve your health and
well-being, such as these ten: 

• 4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise Habit
• 10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas
• How to Become a Vegetarian, the Easy Way
• The Zen of Running, and How to Make It Work For You
• Zen To Slim: A Simple, 5-Step Weight Loss Plan
• 5 Powerful Reasons to Eat Slower
• 16 Tips to Triple Your Workout Effectiveness
• 20 Ways to Eliminate Stress From Your Life
• Beginner’s
  Guide to Cycling
• Beginner’s Guide to Running

The pictures they use
are calming, but maybe Zen for Dummies is more appropriate?

The river flows . . . 

Blogging is a stream of consciousness activity, somewhat
randomly (if random exists, how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin?) as one link leads to another .
. . to Bill Hartzer’s post Collegiate
Social Networking Moves to College.com.

Bill says: Since Facebook
has virtually abandoned the college crowd and opened up its social network to
the public, college students have been left out in the cold. College.com is coming to the aid of those
college students who feel abandoned by Facebook by launching their own social
network. 

Now that Facebook is courting corporate giants like Google,
a circle closes while another opens. Wasn’t Google’s initial incarnation as a
search engine referencing EDU sites for academia before it turned into an
online advertising juggernaut?

The river flows . . . 

. . . Email
is so “yesterday”

where Sean Driscoll from
Microsoft goes from old school email alerts to new media connecting . . .

Old School:

– Contact my Admin, Jake Grey (xxxxx@microsoft.com or 425-704-xxxx) as
he knows how to reach me.

– If urgent, you can try my cell phone, #
below in autosig.

New Media:

– Reach me through my blog at www.communitygrouptherapy.com

– Track me down via Twitter at http://twitter.com/seanodmvp

– Post a message on my wall in Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=745365643

the river flows . . .

. . .  to Jeremiah Owyang’s embarrassing
Facebook add that got him in hot water with his wife.  

the river flows . . .

. . . to Scott Adams
Dilbert post On
the Other Hand and his essay about cognitive dissonance using an
economist’s yin-yang training to explore all sides of an argument, like: 

1. Global
   warming is real, and people are a major cause.
2. When
   considering the problems that global warming will cause, we shouldn’t
   ignore the benefits of global warming, such as fewer deaths from
   cold. 
3. The
   oceans rose a foot in the last hundred years, and the world adapted, so
   the additional rise from global warming might not be as big a problem as
   people assume.
4. Developing
   economical fossil fuel alternatives is the only rational solution to
   global warming because countries such as China and India will use the
   cheapest fuel, period. If only the developed countries that can afford
   alternatives change their ways, it’s not enough to make a dent in the
   problem.

Which brings us back to
Zen Habits: 6 Tips for Commuting to Work by Bike, and the circle is complete.

The Bottom Line: It’s Friday, enjoy your weekend!

<img src="/images/64360-56413/zen.jpg” border=”0″ height=”203″ width=”264″>

Jill
Konrath is busy. She’s a leading-edge sales strategist and business
advisor with am impressive
client list.

And she has
no time for self-serving trash talking from sellers. 5 seconds tops before she
hits the delete button whether it’s e-mail, voice-mail, snail mail or whatever
the pitch.

I could care
less about your product, service, solution or your company, she states bluntly in her post on Selling
to Big Companies.

What is her notion
of trash talk? Here are some examples:

• extraordinary
  differentiators
• one-stop
  shopping
• any
  self-serving marketing-speak pablum
• unique strategies

Savvy marketers that do get her attention do it by being completely
focused on her business and the impact they can have on it!

She is always interested in ways to: 

• Shorten
  time to market
• Speed up
  the sales cycles
• Reduce
  supply chain costs

She declares: This
is business talk, not marketing speak!

And she’s also
interested in any good information or fresh insights about the
challenges her company is facing. How about how other companies are
addressing these issues? If so, she’s interested in that too.

The Bottom Line: We’re very interested in what Jill has
to say. Trash talk moving OUT, customer focused business information (adding value to the sales cycle) to impact
your bottom line, moving IN.

I have in my google reader over 171 bloggers remotely and directly connect with the topics around social networks and business communities I enjoy reading. Here are the top 3 (only one person’s perspective).

This is based on frequency, relevant, timeliness and useful”ness” of content.

These 3 over the last 3 months have the MOST number of starred and shared items in my google reader.

Highly recommend you grab a feed.

1. Chris Brogan
2. Jeremiah Owyang
3. Jake McKee

Video link: http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=FAF

Matt Dickman is a tough guy. He’s from Cleveland: You Gotta Be
Tough!

He’s posted a video of Yahoo! Mash (beta) on his site, Techno//Marketer.
The beta versions are by invite only, so if you’ve been invited to signup
(we’re jealous) you might not need to watch his review.

It’s a recommended watch if for nothing else than he’s
inserted himself into the clip. That’s the kind of brand spunk you get from a
tough Clevelander. 

Matt’s key point is that the beta version is begging for crowdsourcing, to let the
people and the developers get their hands on it, which makes complete sense.

Matt gives a listing of the features and modules, comparing
them to Facebook and MySpace, like Sean
P. Aune who describes it as a primordial version of Facebook 

Neither mentions one of the key features which is inherent
in the name:

 <img src="/images/64360-56413/Yahoo_Mash.png” border=”0″ width=”164″>

As Lee
Odden describes it, it’s about mashing other people’s profiles, which may
be fun and just in time for pre-Halloween.

Scott
Karp offers interesting insight about the assumptions that developers make
about its users, the main one being that Mash thinks he’s a teenager interested
in expressing all the quirkiness that makes him UNIQUE.

Michael
Calore says this. Compared to the more-established social hubs on the web,
Mash is a lightweight offering. It has its share of the usual widgets and
games, but unlike almost every other social network, there’s no blogging
component, no photo-management tool, and no e-mail or contact management. Mash
isn’t the platform, Yahoo is the platform.

Whatever the final outcome of Mash, we have to admire the
behind the scenes marketing that is driving the beta release. 

1. Like
   the gmail beta, they’ve made it somewhat exclusive by invitation only
2. They
   whole mash-it-up profile bending will appeal to teens (like those behind
   the growth of Myspace and Facebook). It’s fun even though they probably
   don’t need another social online community built around them. (Today’s
   teen consumers are tomorrow’s adult consumers, think
   longtail.)
3. The
   rest are likely media & tech professional checking it out. When the
   novelty of mashing wears off, Yahoo! might actually have caught on with
   some other nifty applications freely developed. Like an online focus
   group, they threw out bait to see what’s biting.

The Bottom Line: We’ll get
back to you on this one . . .

<img src="/images/64360-56413/Carp.jpg” border=”0″ width=”441″>