Monthly Archives: July 2008

Judge to Google: YouTubers Will Be Viacommed

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There is a lot of blogOspheric gnashing of virtual teeth at today’s Viacom v. Google decision that is telling Google to release the YouTube clip watching histories of all users to Viacom as part of Viacom’s efforts to demonstrate that much of the activity at YouTube is infringing on their rights.

All I can say is people better get used to this type of decision. Contrary to most of the foolish drivel that passes as analysis of the current state of digital rights, the fact is that until *laws are changed* the courts are going to continue to be very sympathetic to the obvious – there’s a whole lot of copying going on here.

Most people like to confuse what the law *should be*, which is far more tolerant of most regular uses of online material, with what the law *is*, which is very protective of the rights of a big business to protect a intellectual property.

What we see now is a clash between the lax enforcement of many copyright violations and the assumption by onliners that this meant there were *no violations*. When it becomes mainstream practice to break the law (e.g. copy music for distribution rather than backups, drive 60 MPH in a 55 zone, etc) this does not mean the law has changed!) It may suggest the law needs revision, but it does not reasonably support the idea that the law no longer applies.

Napster’s sad experience should have been a wake up call to those who think

Christy Lee Cook and the Country Folks Restaurant, Selma

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Here in Southern Oregon we were rooting for the “other” Cook in American Idol Christy Lee Cook, rather than American Idol winner David Cook.    On the way home from California Sunday we dropped in to the Country Folks restaurant of Selma, Oregon.  My wife and daughter had been there before but I hadn’t.     In addition to being “Christy Lee Central” for local fans who would watch the show from there every Tuesday and Wednesday, Country Folks has simply *outstanding* home cooked food, so I really wanted to put in a plug for them.

We ordered fried chicken and an open faced turkey sandwich with stuffing, potatoes, and gravy.    The chicken was excellent, but the sandwich was a country cooking work of art –  a plate brimming with fresh mashed potatoes, rich gravy, juicy turkey, a scoop of dressing, and cranberry sauce on the side.   After that meal I can’t imagine eating anywhere else along route 199 – Oregon’s very scenic road from I5 to the Coast past Cave Junctions (near the Oregon Caves National Monument), through the Redwoods, and on to the sea.

Local Newspaper Article about the Country Folks Restaurant

Microsoft Yahoo Deal – Enter the Fat Lady and $34 per share?

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The Wall Street Journal has a great summary of the breakdown of the initial Yahoo Microsoft merger talks a few months ago, complete with something of a  play by play in how corporate strategies on both sides …failed.    My read is that the personal mix of Yang and Ballmer was probably all wrong for this, though I still think that part of Yang and Yahoo board’s idea was to play foolishly hard to get in an effort to either kill the deal or boost the price to an unreasonably high $37.

It’s now clear that strategy failed and I’m sticking to my prediction when all this began – Yahoo will be sold to Microsoft, who might work with other partners in the deal, for very close to $35 per share.

Microsoft and Yahoo are clearly back at the table and I think it is even clearer than before that a deal will be done.    I’m compelled to say “I told you so” and I’m looking forward to looking up the many foolish stories written last month that suggested the deal was clearly over when it was obvious then and now that this is a deal that is very unlikely to die.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO

Yahoo Employee on Yahoo Reorganization

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I’m posting this as vindication of my sarcastic view of the Yahoo reorganization plans.    It’s an email sent to Fortune magazine from a Yahoo employee who sarcastically addresses Yahoo’s challenges of the past year – from the Peanut butter memo to the Microsoft merger mania.

Interestingly, soon-to-be-ex-Yahoo  Jeremy Zawodny link was how I found this.

More bad news for Startups and Venture Capitalists

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More bad news for Startups and Venture Capitalists from the New York Times “bits” section about technology trends.    Not only is the number of IPOs falling (zero in Q2 of 2008), but it also the number of mergers or aquisitions of startups appears to be way off as well.

Venture capital folks look to the most favorable “liquidity event” and generally that is an IPO where they may realize tens or even hundreds of times their original investments.    Also favorable though generally offering less profit than an IPO is an aquisition or merger where other companies take over the startup without it going public.

I found this number very interesting and potentially alarming for Venture investors:  An average of 8.6 years from startup to IPO, the longest in some time.    Given that the present value of money is greater than future value, time horizons this long suggest, for example, that even a doubling of your VC money over that long period of time would represent only a “fair to poor” return compared to alternatives.   Given that most startups never go IPO anyway it would seem that the risk factor is going way up for these investments.

SEO Pseudo Alert: Google Crawling Flash

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For many years anybody who knew anything about search engine optimization “SEO”, would scoff at the idea of using more than minor number amount of Flash elements in websites, because for many years those Flash elements were largely invisible to search engines – most notably Google – and therefore sites that used Flash would often rank lower than others simply because Google could not recognize the Flash parts of their content.

Designers like Flash because it offers a very dynamic and attractive way to present information.  It is image rich and context poor.   At least until today’s Google announcement that they have figured out a way to index Flash stuff.

Although this is great news for the millions of sites using Flash that will now probably enjoy somewhat better rankings as their Flash content and navigation (link structure)  is better indexed by Google, I’d caution designers to keep avoiding Flash until this process is much better understood.  I’d guess that one of the key defects of flash sites – having navigation that is opaque to the Googlebot – will continue to be problematic even under the new systems.    A good designer can get much of the same “look and feel” of flash with good use of good images, art, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and from an SEO perspective I think sites are still well advised to note the best observation I’ve ever heard about SEO from Matt Cutts at Google – almost certainly Matt is the world’s most authoritative expert on Google ranking and SEO:

“Googlebot is stupid”, said Matt, so you need to help it figure out your website.

I guess Googlebot is smarter now that it recognizes Flash, but Matt’s advice about this is still very relevant and frankly simpler than most people think.    Here’s some SEO advice for newbies:

1) Think In terms of ranking *properly* rather than ranking higher than sites that are better than you are.   If competitors are more relevant think of ways to make *your site* and *your product* more relevant.

2) Research keywords (or just guess if you are lazy) and make a list of those that you want to rank well for.

3) Make sure your content is rich in the keywords for which you are ranking well.   Make sure your page Titles use those keywords in the Title for the page, and use unique, keyword rich titles for each of your pages.    Make sure the content in the page is very relevant to the query – ie is this something that is going to help the reader out in their journey to enlightenment?    If not, make it so!

4) Links, links, links.    These are the mother’s milk of online success.   Do not buy them, earn them and get them from other sites in your network, sites of friends, etc.    Establish relationships of relevance with others that will get them to link to your website.     Avoid cheap linking schemes – as always think in terms of what creates a valuable resource for your readers.

5) Blog.  Blog more.  Google appears to be ranking blog content favorably and I predict they’ll need to do even more of this as blogs are replacing websites as the freshest and most relevant content on most topics.

Whether you are a mom and pop or a multinational, if you want to rank well online you should be blogging regularly about your topics.   When blogging, follow the rules 1-4 above.

6) Lower your monetary expectations.   Making money online is much harder than offline people think.   Even most Silicon Valley insiders generally only make big money from a handful of projects.    The overwhelming majority of startups fail, often leaving the founders with nothing but the memory of hard work.

7) Raise your personal expectations.  The online world is fascinating, exploding in popularity and significance, and is where you need to be.  Get on board with a blog!