Feb
26
Well, no sooner did I tout the growth and value of HD streaming site Stage6.com and they decide to close up shop. It could be my rationalization, but it sounds like they were a victim of their own success. According to some sources the combination of traffic, copyright policing and board greed (nixing a spin-out funding deal), led to a decision to shut Stage6.com down. I’m guessing deal negotiations also broke down when new investors wanted reps & warranties about copyright liability.
On the surface, shutting such a property down doesn’t make much sense…someone is probably too busy with the DivX-inside business model to mold the right Stage6 deal (including all the copyright complexity). But, sometimes such focus makes perfect sense…[UPDATE: especially if the core team is gone]
Jordan, I’m still interested in talking if you are…I’m guessing you’ve got something interesting in the worx…
UPDATE: TechCrunch provides a blow-by-blow on the Stage6 drama. As an early investor in DivX along with Frank Creer and others, I sure hope it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. There is still a lot of value in that property…
May
27
In honor of TC’s lucky 13th post about PayPerPost, most with some Mike Arrington swipe at PPP or Ted Murphy, I’ve created the “Be Like Mike” game below. Although TechCrunch and PPP compete for the same social media advertising dollars, Ted and Mike are like the “Odd Couple” of the web and have helped each other build industry-leading companies.
The PPP Direct transaction widget really disrupts the industry PPP created last year, enabling bloggers to cut direct sponsorship deals without the 100% markups of some PPP copycats. I was going to provide an in-depth review of the announcement, but honestly couldn’t do much better than Andy Beard did in his post “PayPerPost Direct Changes the Paid Review Landscape“. The Digg of Andy’s post also includes some comments worth reading for anyone impressed with the quality of Andy’s review. As much as I like Mike and appreciate his coverage, I’d love to see more TechCrunch reviews at Andy’s depth. Maybe I should make a game called “Be Like Andy”? I just did…
Hat tip to Amit for PicToGame.
UPDATE 05-29-07: Talk about synchronicity(?). Arrington jumped on the customized game meme less than 24 hours after my post above. PlayMyGame is another entry in that space and I expect more. I can’t wait to see this functionality combined with StripGenerator to allow personalized SouthPark strips/movies or the like.
I’ll call this game “Be Yourself” and you can guess whose face is under all that cake:
Dec
16
Arrington had some nice things to say about one of my portfolio companies today. So did Scoble. Interesting that neither one touched the topic of undisclosed affiliate marketing bloggers — a multi-billion dollar FTC magnet (supposedly 40% of Amazon sales come from affiliate links — with disclosure requirements entirely absent in their Operating Agreement). Luckily, PPP’s Disclosure Policy framework can help all those affiliate bloggers who have hundreds of undisclosed aff posts in their SE-indexed archives…
That’s not the only thing PPP is helping with. They just launched another $1000 puzzle — about RockStartup. If you haven’t already found RockStartup, the world’s first real-time reality show, check out what it’s like in the belly of a venture-backed startup. After you’ve done that, collect this piece #19 and find/assemble the full puzzle first to win $1000.