Neatorama has a great article on the changing faces of some very familiar corporate logos. I think I like some of the old ones better! Kwanon Cameras?!
Evolution of technology logos
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Category Archives: companies
Web 2.0 Conference
WebGuild of Silicon Valley sponsored a great one day conference last week. I missed the event but here are some pictures courtesy of Reshma Kumar and Daya Baran, the Vice President and President of WebGuild who have really done an extraordinary job making that group one of the premier internet insider gatherings in the world.
This year Craig Newmark from Craigslist gave one of the keynotes. He’s one of the most interesting folks in the internet landscape and it would really have been fun to hear his talk. For me, the huge success of Craigslist, combined with the simple and spartan look and structure, supports the idea that the internet at a core level is about *people and information* more than anything else.
Yahoo and Google BFF?
Reuters reports that Yahoo really wants to find a way out of the MS deal, and Google is offering *something* though it’s not at all clear to any outsiders what that something is. Probably a partnership to help Yahoo monetize all their traffic using Google tools and perhaps Google search, though I’m somewhat skeptical that Yahoo can come away from this with a valuation boost near the value of what MS has offered.
If Microsoft is smart they’ll let Yahoo be Yahoo, with contractual assurances that Yahoo can keep on innovating and doing what they have done well for some time in the overall internet and Web 2.0 space. They’ll let Yahoo retain their brand and culture, and basically keep things the way they have been minus the crappy monetization. In turn Yahoo will have a few years – with the newfound clout and help of MS – to turn around the crappy monetization, bad morale, and loss of search share.
disclosure: Got the Yahoo Stocks. Loving the Yahoo stocks.
Current TV filing for $100,000,000 IPO. Initial PE ratio = infinity!
Today Current TV, with Al Gore a prominent investor, is filing for a big IPO. But there is a problem. They lost a lot of money “making” their 64 million in revenues last year. Will they ever be profitable? Global warming or not, I’m guessing they will be profitable about the same time that hell freezes over.
I still just don’t get it. I understand why video clips are fun and a significant development online, but I don’t get those who express *economic* enthusiasm for online videos produced by … you and me. As I’ve noted before about online video, I don’t understand why people think video sites can make money. Youtube cost Google 1.6 billion but doesn’t make money. Podtech had a brilliant, well executed, forward vision of the online video landscape. They even had the ultimate forward looking blogger spokesmodel Robert Scoble (who has just moved to FastCompany.com and is right now hanging in Davos with the uber-economic-elite). Despite this Podtech failed to deliver on the promise of monetizing quality content to the larger user base. I had a chance to talk about this with John Furrier at CES. John told me he’s still very bullish on video, but Podtech is going to focus more on a model where they’ll be producing company videos for corporate clients, helping them to leverage social media advantages. We also talked about how hungry many big companies are for those who understand social media and want to leverage that power to their corporate advantage. This, in my opinion, is where you’ll see most video and podcasast production efforts moving over the next few years. The money is in leading corporate clients into the uncharted social media waters rather than trying to build website visitation and monetize clips. The latter is a very dead end in my view.
So, should you invest in Current TV’s IPO? Sure you should, right after hell freezes over.
Yahoo carnage coming at conference call.
As a Yahoo enthusiast and shareholder it’s been hard to watch the company struggle so hard over the past few years only to lose ground to Google, especially because Yahoo’s social networking efforts and web 2.0 initiatives have in most ways been superior to Google’s. Flickr is the best example of a superb Yahoo application that is more used than Google’s Picasa (which is also excellent but was late to the scene so most early adopters are sticking with Flickr, which is somewhat better anyway in my view).
Henry Blodget at Silicon Valley Insider is reporting that Yahoo will proceed soon with the drastic layoff scenario – rumored to be some 1500-2500 people.
Human issues aside, this will likely be very good for the stock price and company’s future prospects. Google learned early on that the key to profitability was scaling up systems without comparable scaling up of staff. Google thus leveraged the incredible efficiency of computers to generate more profits. Yahoo, on the other hand and especially with Terry Semel in charge, sees themselves as more of a media and content producer with all the labor intensiveness and lack of internet efficiency that approach entails. Google was right, Yahoo was wrong. Even Google’s own Youtube, a masterpiece of creating cheap content without staff, is struggling to monetize all the content and traffic.
I’m oversimplifying the relationship of content production to profit here, but in general terms I continue to believe that the expression “content is king” was *never* true on the internet, and that in many ways sticking to this mantra cost Yahoo a big part of the ballgame. Yahoo actually used Google search as Yahoo’s search tool for many years, and could certainly have aquired Google in the early days for millions of dollars rather than becoming eclipsed by Google which now has a market capitalization of about five times Yahoo. Why didn’t they do it? Google was “search”, not “content”, and Yahoo foolishly believed content was king.
Content is a pawn in the big online chess game, and don’t forget it.
Scoblegate? No – Scobleizer ads are NOT a sellout.
Mike Arrington, hanging in Davos with the global power elite, has a great title today with “Scoble Sells Out“, a fake jab at his pal Robert Scoble who is finally putting ads on his hugely popular blog (and is also lounging in Davos with the power elite!).
No big deal in my view – Scoble has been good about disclosure and perhaps even more importantly is a basically stand up guy, so I hardly worry that he’s going to start misleading readers in favor of sponsor B.S.
That said, the blogging community would be well advised to develop disclosure standards if people want to maintain credibility and avoid the huge ethical gray areas that come about when socializing, economics, and blogging come together as they have over the past few years.
My view on corruption in politics (and blogging is similar) is that the challenges don’t come from basic dishonesty or payola – there is some of that, but the key problem is more subtle. In systems where economic support flows to those who *already* share the set of opinions with the money folks you don’t need any dishonesty to have a major distortion of the process in favor of those groups that can fund the people who share their ideas. Often people wrongly suggest that votes are “bought”, when this is rare. Rather support flows to the candidates who share the views of the supporters. This system would actually work OK if the contributions were small, but loopholes have allowed certain groups to have hugely disproportionate impact on our system.
This is why the conversational marketing model is bogus. Bringing businesses into the conversation is a good general idea. But if it only involves those businesses who can afford to buy a conversation it’s just a step away from basic advertising, yet disguised as real dialog. That isn’t corruption, but it is distortion.
Gizmodo on CES blogger ban
Brian at Gizmodo has a thoughtful, pointed piece today about why he thinks people were way too hard on Gizmodo for pranking Motorola at CES, turning off screens during a presentation.
He hasn’t changed my mind yet because next year I think every booth staff person is going to be more skeptical than they were this year of the legitimacy of those with “blogger” badges (Gizmodo folks probably had press badges – but this was all reported as a blogging stunt).
More importantly CES’s great treatment of bloggers has been rewarded with stunts.
Brian’s case would be stronger if Gizmodo’s buzz machine had focused on negatives at CES – such as some of the press payoffs he mentions in his article, rather than simply sabotaging a presentation for cheap YouTube thrills and views.
But, ultimately I suppose the community and those affected more directly than me must define the appropriateness of this kind of activity and if there is little outrage by Motorola or CES than maybe I was the one who overreacted.
CES 2008 – Blogging officially arrives at CES with some mixed reactions.
CES: SONY Pirates of the Burning Sea Party
SONY Pirates of the Burning Sea Party
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
Thanks to SONY Online and Flying Lab software for a very nice party showcasing the Pirates of the Burning Sea, a new Massively Multiplayer online game or “MMO”. I’ve been researching the MMORPG topic for the past few weeks and it was great to get a chance to talk to one of the game developers and Flying Lab PR about MMOs in general as well as their experiences with this game.
Also really fun was playing some poker with professional dealers who were very helpful to the many Texas Holdem novices. One of my dealers has dealt in the world series of Poker, which was cool. Very nice guy who could track the fast action in remarkable form. Interestingly, when asked a different dealer said that he makes about $100,000 per year dealing at one of the top casinos here. I think most of this is from tips.
One Laptop Per Child Project and Intel’s departure
One Laptop Per Child Project
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
For a project of this scope it was very disappointing to see Intel’s departure, only a few days before CES. I agree with CNET that this was handled poorly on both sides, and I’m especially concerned that Negroponte’s brilliant vision may ultimately get undermined by his in ability to compromise with the market forces that drive consumer electronics much more than altruism or societal need.
That said it appeared that AMD remains solidly behind the project and many countries are buying in, so hopefully this will bring to pass the grand vision of technology to those who have the least chance of getting it otherwise – poor children in developing countries.
My favorite project of CES remains the Meraki mesh networking concept. It’s a great example of leveraging existing technologies in new and clever ways while keeping common sense, profitability, and global citizenship in mind.
Joe Duck 