Record Labels, Old Media Don't Get New Media, Online Videos and Embedding

I came across this op-ed by Damian Kulash ("WhoseTube?", NYTimes), lead singer and guitarist of the band OK Go. And then this morning I received this article from Fast Company:

"OK Go Ditches Label Over YouTube Embedding Rights" by Dan Nosowitz

The article basically covers Damian's prior piece and tells about the conclusion of their conflict with EMI, who wouldn't allow them to have the embed code active for their YouTube videos. Once EMI blocked embedding their video views went from 10,000 per day to 1,000 per day. After OK Go left EMI and turned back on embeddable videos "digital album sales tripled and digital tracks sales have jumped more than sevenfold."



This brings me back to my days at GoingOn Networks when we were working with Forbes.com on various projects. In early 2007, our first project was to help them with an online video contest. It was going to be an "office pranks" contest where people could upload their videos and get rated by the Forbes' readership and a panel of judges.

Since I was leading this project and the product development, one of the first issues I had with Forbes.com was that they didn't want to allow video embedding. I remember strongly warning them that they would limit the viral effect if they didn't offer this. As typical old media people, they stated that they didn't want eyeballs off their main page and lose ad dollars. Our team explained that ads could be inserted into the videos and it would be a greater loss in terms of the video views. We didn't have hard numbers, such as OK Go's 90% drop-off rate, but it was clear anecdotally it would be a major hindrance to their viewership and audience growth.

Working hard to please our client and make this is a successful contest, I introduced Forbes.com to our contact at CAA, who was extremely helpful. One of their talent agents introduced them to a couple film producers and they seeded the Forbes.com Office Pranks site with some great content. We launched and their numbers weren't great. In my eyes, it was a flop and as a startup we were hoping for a home run. There were a couple other issues we warned them about, but the driver was that they weren't willing to allow the blogosphere to run with their content. They thought people would run away with their content and their ad dollars. This was 2007, but today is 2010 and it's amazing to me that many old media companies still don't get it.

"Is America Losing Its Mojo?" or Are We Becoming a Nontrepreneur Nation?

A couple weeks ago Newsweek published Fareed Zakaria's piece:

Is America Losing Its Mojo?
Innovation is as American as baseball and apple pie. But some traditions can't be trademarked.
*photo from Newsweek (from left: Bettmann-Corbis: LOC-Corbis; Alfred Eisenstaedt / Getty Images; Jennifer Corbett / AP; Michael Grecco / Getty Images)


This was an interesting and insightful article that overlapped with my old op-ed, "Coming Soon: Nontrepreneur Nation," that was published at InsideWork and Private Equity HUB last year.

Another timely and overlapping article was last week's cover story in TIME magazine, "The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting".

Zakaria's op-ed continues along his "rise of the rest" theme and focused on Asia's current and future prominence. I believe he missed an important factor in this discussion which is America's declining taste for risk and entrepreneurship. In my opinion, this is driven by overparenting and failures in our education system.



Additional commentary from Forbes' Rich Karlgaard, "Fareed Zakaria on Innovation".

A related post by By Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, "Protectionism vs. the Innovation Nation".

Asia's Very Smart Cities: Songdo, Korea and Meixi Lake, China

This month's Forbes magazine has an article entitled "Asia's Smart Metropolis: South Korea's Songdo and China's Meixi Lake are spending billions on intelligent networks with an eco-vibe" where companies such as Cisco and 3M are highlighted.

What's missing in this discussion is smaller technology company I'm an advisor to called Innotive. It's led by my two close friends, Jimmy and Peter, who I did my first two startups with. Innotive is an integrated platform that allows for the convergence of rich media content through an interactive, zooming interface. It powers interactive displays at retail stores, such as BMW and Nike, and provides a control room solution to manage CCTV camera monitoring efficiently through one workstation. The latter product is called InnoWatch which will be integrated into the Songdo City project with over 1,000 touch-screen displays installed.


Songdo is a huge development project that spans over 1,500 acres, 150 buildings and will cost over $35 billion. It is not only a "smart" city but a green city that will be the largest private LEED development in the world since the whole city will be based on LEED building standards.

Below is an example of Innotive's InnoWatch solution:

A longer, detailed version of the Forbes' article was published online, "Very Smart Cities," which you can read here.

Sramana Mitra's Amazon Adventure... "Entrepreneur Journeys" is Out Today

Sramana Mitra has a great post at Forbes, "My Adventure With Amazon," about her experience with Amazon's BookSurge. BookSurge is their new publishing subsidiary and it will be interesting to observe how they will disrupt the traditional publishing channels.

Sramana's has a prior article, "How Amazon Could Change Publishing," that examines how they could disintermediate the old guard of publishing. She explains:

Retailers take almost 50%. The agent takes 15% to 20%. The publisher gets squeezed--it's cause for huge celebration if they make 20%.

"On a book that costs $24.95, the author gets at most $1 to $1.50," says Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, an online print-on-demand publisher of photography books.

Wow. A buck a book. I thought about writing a book in the coming year, but these economics suck and might not be worth my time if there wasn't an alternative. It seems it would be wise for someone like me to go with Amazon's BookSurge. The economics have to make sense for a person with a day job to suffer from less sleep and an angry wife to write a book :) More from Sramana, "Amazon: Will It Kindle Vertical Integration?"

Also Sramana's book, ENTREPRENEUR JOURNEYS, is out today. The book's synopsis:

"Through all the ups and downs of the past twenty-five years, technology entrepreneurs have learned to navigate opportunities and market windows and bring to bear new companies. Many have fallen by the wayside, but others have thrived and grown into successful business leaders. In ENTREPRENEUR JOURNEYS, Volume One (Amazon’s BookSurge; October 1, 2008; $16.95 paperback), serial entrepreneur and Forbes columnist Sramana Mitra offers the rare seat at the table with some of these fascinating entrepreneurs providing an intimate look at how to build a thriving business. As one entrepreneur speaks with another, readers gain access to case studies—conversations really—exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship in a way that only an experienced strategist like Mitra can probe and extract. Her synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to her discussions with:

* Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of AdventNet, and Jerry Rawls, co-founder and CEO of Finisar, on bootstrapping
* Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak, Gautam Godhwani, founder and CEO of SimplyHired, and Russ Fradin, co-founder and CEO of Adify, on taking on giants
* Philippe Courtot, Chairman and CEO of Qualys, and Steve Singh, Chairman and CEO of Concur, on disrupting business models
* Marcos Galperin, co-founder and CEO of MercadoLibre, and Edward Fields, founder and CEO of HotChalk, on addressing unmet market needs
* Hans Peter Michelet, Executive Chairman of Energy Recovery Incorporated (ERI), Carol Realini, founder and CEO of Obopay, and Harish Hande co-founder and Managing Director of SELCO, on tackling planet scale problems"

New Forbes CEO Network Launched!

The new Forbes CEO Network is finally up. Very cool and congratulations to the Forbes.com and GoingOn team! This was built on my old software company's social media platform. If you're a C-level executive, check it out here.

Forbes.com Office Pranks Network Launched!

Yesterday we launched for Forbes.com an office pranks network. Check it out here!

Taking off for Seoul now and will be there for a week. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!