March 15, 2007

SecondLife moves to Seattle

Ok, not entirely true. Technically, SecondLife can't move anywhere since it is the meta-verse. However, Linden Labs just opened a Seattle office on our building.

I noticed walking into our offices after lunch today that there was a new company name, Linden Labs, listed in the building directory. I figured it couldn't be, but maybe it was, after all Phillip Rosedale was an early Real Networks guy.

So I went up to the 5th floor, walked into their office, and asked. Sure enough - the neighborhood just improved. Welcome to the Buttnick Building and Pioneer Square. Very cool.

March 15, 2007 | | Comments (52) | TrackBack (0)

December 31, 2006

Pluggd Update

It has been a busy couple of weeks down in our lovely Pioneer Square offices. Here is the run down:

  • Drew Olanoff from the Dest Damn Tech Show and Scriggity will be moving out to Seattle from Phili and joining us full-time. I can speak for the rest of the team that we're super excited about having Drew around. He brings tremendous excitment, vision, and energy as well as keen insight in what is happening on the web (or as he likes to call it - The Interwebs) today. Welcome Drew!

Receiving this level of press is certainly exciting and helps keep our team pumped up about what we're doing. However, we certainly have to be careful not to get too caught up in the buzz. The reason we're receiving this level of attention is because people are excited about the benefits our service promisies and we need to remain very focused on delivering.

     

December 31, 2006 | | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

December 10, 2006

We've just closed our seed round

A few days ago we announced that we've successfully raised $1.65m as part of our seed round. VentureBeat did a nice review our current flagship feature (HearHere) and broke the news of our funding. Thanks, Matt.

This is my first time out as an entrepreneur and one thing I've learned is that raising money, even a smaller seed round, can be very time consuming. As much as you would like to think it doesn't impact the core business - it really does. There is no doubt that the time I spent raising money had a minor negative impact on the business. That is the paradox for start-ups - you need capital to build your business but you can spend so much time focused on raising capital that your business suffers. I'm thrilled to have this behind me and to once again turn my full attention to the business (product development, hiring great people, responding to customer emails, talking to partners, etc.). As one of my angel investors, Brian Magierski, always told me, "The goal isn't raising money. The goal is building the business. You just sometimes need capital to get there."

We actually didn't try to raise $1.65m (which is a healthy amount for a seed round). Initially we were looking to raise a much smaller amount, but there was so much interest in what we were doing and we believed that we could accelerate our progress by taking in more capital. However, it wasn't just about the money. It was about the people. We were incredibly fortunate to have such an incredible group of technology and business leaders as investors in Pluggd and available for guidance and advice.

We also didn't expect to have Intel Capital participate in our seed round. This is quite unusual for them to do. Initially, we only spoke to Matt Gordon (then at ICAP before joining Microsoft's IP group) because he was friends with one of our lead angel investors. He thought Matt might know other angels and have some good feedback on what we were doing. In the end, Matt liked what we were doing enough to mention it to some of the other folks at ICAP...and things just went from there.

One thing I've learned is the importance of having some lead investors who can give you credibility in the community. You need someone to stand up and say "these guys are credible and I'm putting my own money in." Perhaps these folks should be called "Archangels" because they really do play a key role in leading a group of investors. My "Archangels" were Scott Oki and Bill Bryant. I will always be extremely grateful for their support and belief in me and Pluggd.

Anyway, we have a ton of work to do. Afterall, raising money isn't the goal.

December 10, 2006 in Pluggd | | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

September 17, 2006

Internet Only TV Shows. Podcasts are Dead. Long Live Podcasts.

A few weeks ago, Jeff Pulver posted "TV Shows Only Available on the Internet" where he identified a segment of Internet Video that isn't the "clips" you find of YouTube, but isn't simply re-purposed terrestrial TV. I don't know Jeff, but I can say from reading his blog a lot recently, that Jeff is one of the few people right now who "get it." By this I mean, that as great as YouTube is, YouTube IS NOT the future of TV on the Internet. There will be different segments of video online, and the funny clips on YouTube will continue to be a big part of that; however, there YouTube demographic is highly focused on 15-20 year olds and there is a lot of people who don't fall into that category. It is more akin to something like MTV as opposed to all TV. Jeff gets it.

One thing I noticed was the Jeff didn't refer to these shows as Video Podcasts or Podcasts. The term podcast as been a failure for everyone (except Apple). It confuses a ton of mainstream users into thinking they need an iPod or always have to download, when in fact, most people consume this content from their PC. Podcasting has become a "bad word" to many investors who simply don't understand that what we're really talking about is moving radio and TV to the Internet (in a more social way - it won't and shouldn't be the exact same experience). In fact, I believe that most of the $100b in TV & Radio advertising that does eventually move online will go to on-demand Internet Radio & TV shows as opposed to sites like YouTube.

I thought it would be a fun exercise to find out how many of these shows that Jeff identified could also be called podcasts, meaning you can subscribe via an RSS feed. It was pretty hard to find the feed for some of them, but overall 71% of these Internet TV shows are also podcasts. So while the name might be out of favor, the medium is very real and continues to grow.

Out of the 101 shows, 71 have RSS feeds and 30 do not have RSS feeds. Quite a few of the shows that included RSS feeds referred to themselves as podcasts, video podcasts, or vlogs. However, a number of them simply referred to themselves as TV or video.

September 17, 2006 | | Comments (41) | TrackBack (0)

September 11, 2006

Seattle Times Profiles Pluggd

Picture_1 The Seattle Times did a profile on Pluggd today. This post is cross listed on the Pluggd Blog, where I go into some explanation for why I think the term "podcast" is going to eventually become obsolete.


September 11, 2006 | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 28, 2006

Pageviews are obsolete

Evan William, the CEO of Odeo (a Pluggd competitor), recently blogged about how pageviews are an obsolete metrics. The post mentions web site hits as a previous metric that eventually become obsolete. The post is very similar to my post from a few months back, Alexa is Web 2.0 entery #1, where I mention the negative consequences facing innovative start-ups due to the use of Alexa by potential partners, investors, the press, etc.

Evan probably cares about this for the same reasons I do. Odeo's site, like ours, enables users to listen to podcasts from a web page using a flash player. So a user can actually spend a considerable amount of time, perhaps hours, on our respective sites without generating much in the way of pages views. By any measure, a user who spends this much time on a site is a very engaged and valuable user. Unfortunately, the lack of 'pageviews' creates the false impression that the site lacks user engagement.

The user of Ajax has become very popular because it enables web developers to create richer user experience for their users. However, Ajax typically reduces 'page views' because the user stays on a single page while multiple asynchronous calls execute. Here is another case where a site may have engaged, happy, and valuable users, but the site will ultimately be penalized by the press, investors, partners, advertisers, etc., because they created a better user experience.

The final insult involves RSS and widgets. Where users can incorporate content from a web service without actually visiting the site to generate page views. With the profilleration of feeds and these widgets, this again penalizes innovative start-ups. Actually, I think the notion of a portal is also becoming obsolete because of widgets and RSS. In fact, I don't think of Pluggd as a portal. I think of Pluggd as a Nexus that brings things together, both aggregating, and syndicating content and functionality.

Since Alexa uses a browser toolbar installed on the client, it could easily be modified to monitor HTTP traffic to account Ajax traffic. Also, the Alexa client could track the time spent on a site to account for scenarios like listening to audio or watching video. Another option, would be for companies like Hitwise that partner with ISPs to measure traffic to add relevant metrics that are more appropriate for this next generation of web service.

August 28, 2006 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Pluggd Selected to Present at DEMOfall 2006

Demofall_promokit_728x90

Pluggd has been selected to present at DEMOfall 2006. This is a huge honor for us. TiVo, the Palm Pilot, and Java are all products that launched at DEMO. Lately, some of the leading Web 2.0 sites like Riya were launched at DEMO.

We will be launching a new product that we are really excited about. We just can't talk about it yet. You see, as part of the DEMO conference we've been asked to keep things quiet until the actual event.

"Pluggd has been invited to join this elite group because 
the company has developed a solution that helps people 
find and enjoy digital content. In a crowded market, 
Pluggd's technology is not only unique and compelling, 
but has the potential to change the way we interact 
with Web content." - Chris Shipley

Check our Drew's post about this on the Pluggd Blog.

Two other Seattle start-ups have been invited, Cozi and Jookster. Here is the John Cook article.

Here is the press release announcement.

Also, the annoncement is now on Digg. So fellow Diggers, show us some Digg love. :-)

August 28, 2006 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

August 27, 2006

Google Launches Hosted Office Applications

This has been rumored for some time, but it's official now. Google is rolling out Google Apps for Your Domain (terrible name) that allows businesses to use gCalendar, gMail, gTalk, and web page creation tool.

The gTalk and web page creation tool aren't particularly interesting to me. But email and calendar are very interesting to me.

Frankly, since we've started Pluggd, we've struggled to find email and calendar solutions that work for a company of our size. Even though our company is primarily comprised of engineer types, we didn't want the hassle of hosting our own email server. Partially this was a cost issue (not wanting to pay for Exchange), but primarily this was a focus issue. We wanted to use our cycles to make Pluggd a great product and not waste cycles of "IT work."

We're currently using webmail.us since it comes with our contract with RackSpace, but we don't love it. It is slow, lacks key features, and has very poor search capabilities. However, our biggest pain is around shared calendering. We want a simple tool that we can use across our team and with the partners, contracters, etc., that are external to Pluggd, but we work with regularly. We haven't found an easy or cost effective solution for this.

I use gmail and gcalendar personally, and I am excited about moving Pluggd to these services. There is a real pain point and Microsoft, despite Office's dominance, has not found a way to address this pain.

I've actually started using Writely lately, and have found it surprisingly adept at dealing with all my needs. The ability to collaborate online and export to Word, PDF, etc., were the key features that have put me over the edge.

I've recently switched from MS PowerPoint to Keynote. So I'm almost completely weened off Microsoft Office. Frankly, this is something I never thought would happen. Moving from Windows to the Mac - fine. Leaving MS Office, for a knowledge worker like myself, was just not something I ever thought would happen. Seems a lot more plausible, and perhaps even likely, now.

Don Dodge, a Microsoft employee, has a post that points out MS Office Live apps, but I don't buy it. The apps he points out are things like Customer Manager, but not the basic core functionality that Google is offering. I think he is missing the point. Perhaps MS Office Live comes out with a bunch of great alternatives to what Google is offering. I have a hard time seeing MS doing anything that directly erodes a $10 billion/year revenue stream. Even if they do, how long with it take before they actually ship something. We'll see. But for now, we're going to give the new Google Apps a test drive.

Newsome.org accurately points out the obstacles for enterprises adopting these types of hosted services.

As I have said many times, corporate America is not going to embrace online applications and storage for a long time- privacy, security, fear of a bad decision, and confidentiality requirements ensure that. But the more individuals and small businesses that opt for Google's free alternatives, the bigger Google's toehold is- both in the office productivity space and in connection with its master plan to be the keeper of all of our data.

However, small and medium sized businesses will eat this up.

August 27, 2006 | | Comments (35) | TrackBack (0)

August 23, 2006

Microsoft to Provide and Sell Ads on Facebook

Picture_35_2 The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft has reached a 3 year agreement with FaceBook to provide advertising on the social networking site popular with college students.

Microsoft has recently lost out to Google on several opportunities, AOL and MySpace, to provide advertising on high profile sites. These types of deals are critical to Microsoft's ability to create a viable alternative to Google's AdSense. They need high quality and high volume advertising slot to attract advertising to their ad platform. It's a chicken and egg problem.

I actually think this is a great win for Microsoft. FaceBook seems a lot 'smarter' than MySpace, e.g., FaceBook provides APIs shortly after MySpace screws the eco-system. Smart. Very Smart. Overall, I think FaceBook will continue to grow.

Here is some coverage from elsewhere in the blogosphere:

Inside Microsoft

"Microsoft and Facebook say that talks only picked up in the last week, no doubt taking on an air of importance after the MySpace deal. In fact, Facebook’s entire business strategy seems to be to point to MySpace and say, “Hey, we deserve that, too!” After MySpace was bought for $500 million and started to look like a bargain, Facebook reportedly pointed to that and claimed it deserved no less than $2 billion. Of course, thanks to this ad deal, Facebook might not need to be bought by anyone anymore (and MySpace is looking mighty stupid for selling out as early as it did)."

Don Doge on The Next Big Thing

"Financial details were not disclosed but Microsoft VP Steve Berkowitz said “not comparable to the MySpace deal because we focused on the right economics for both parties.’’

FaceBook COO said Owen Van Natta said Facebook chose Microsoft because the company’s technology and approach are a better fit. 'We think they have a real understanding of the need to take a fresh approach to advertising and social media.'"

August 23, 2006 in Web/Tech | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

August 22, 2006

Sony Acquires Grouper for $65m

Picture_34_1 Sony Pictures has acquired video startup Grouper for $65m. The deal was initially denied by Grouper. However, it has no been confirmed and reported on several blogs and onling magazines. The acquisition price was very high.

Grouper has three products offerings:

  • An online video sharing site
  • A video editing client
  • A P2P networking client used to distribute video in a closed network (not yet released)

Grouper claims 8 million unique users while ComScore reports 554,000 unique users. Pretty big difference. I wonder if this is due to a difference between web based users and users of Grouper's client software. Grouper does have some unique functionality, e.g., such as the ability to leave video comments on a video. This feature is demonstrated nicely in a funny video showing Grouper beating up on their competitors I found on Howard Lindzon's blog who also posts about the acquisition.

Grouper was founded by veteran entrepreneur, Josh Felser, who previously ran Spinner.com which was acquired by AOL for $320m in 1999.  Grouper raised $5.25 million from Duff Ackerman & Goodrich LLC,  T-Venture, and angel investors

TechCrunch does a nice job comparing Grouper's per user valuation (it's much higher) against similar recent acquisitions iFilm and Atom Entertainment. Some bloggers (and here is another  and another) believe Sony overpaid. Mike Arrington suggests that Grouper's larger per user valuation may be due to the value of their P2P client.

Here is the press release.

Thanks to Brian Goffman, from Madrona Ventures, for bringing this to my attention.

August 22, 2006 | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

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