AOL shutting down Bebo

Posting from my bberry again. I have read these week that AOL might be shutting down Bebo, the social network it acquired a couple of years ago for more than $800 million. Bebo was at the time a leading social network, mostly in the UK.

With social networks still working on getting their biz models to work, it seems to me like in the end it will be about Facebook and someone else (not many), along the lines of what happens with Google in search.

Too bad for AOL. Things are not working that well despite its cost cutting efforts. I still remember interviewing with them not long ago in NYC... Bebo was then one of the most valued and promising assets for them. Not any more...

The most shocking thing, though, is that at the start of the internet era AOL acquired Time Warner (so called merger of equals...where the small fish got the big one).

On short-selling

I'm currently reading "Too big to fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, about the 2008 financial crash. A short quote that caught my eye regarding short selling and the recent comments (by Spanish ministers, Telefonica's CEO Alierta and others) about such practice hitting the Spanish stock markets.

"For the last several weeks, Lehman has been complaining about short-sellers. Academic research and our experience indicate that when management teams do that, it is a sign that management is attempting to distract investors from serious problems" (David M. Einhorn, chairman and co-founder of Greenlight Capital, a renowned hedge fund, 3 months before Lehman's collapse).

Self explanatory...
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Posted from my Blackberry

Piracy in Spain

Earlier this week, the LA Times argued that Sony Pictures might be thinking about closing its DVD business in Spain. Word says that the other big studios might follow. Sad as it is, I do understand it.

Spain has climbed to the third spot in the world ranking of piracy, after South Korea and China. In absolute terms, which is insane considering that we are roughly 45 million people.

According to different sources the number of DVDs sold or rented in Spain in 2009 dropped by 30%, compared to 2008. On the flipside, the number of illegal downloads jumped from 132 million in 2006 and 350 million in 2008, according to the data of the studios. The studios further report that sales of DVDs in Spain generate three to ten times less income than in the UK or Germany. Likewise, the number of DVD rental businesses has dropped dramatically in Spain over the recent years.

It is clear to me that big media players have not adapted yet to the new times. Or at least not around the world (for instance, I keep reading about new iPad deals cut between Apple and content distributors for the US... but what will happen outside of the US? See my post from February 3 on geographies). People share and consume content in a different way. Is it that hard to understand? The music business had to learn this the hard way but it seems to be on the track to recovery. Motion picture industry should pay more attention to everything going on around it.

But having said the above, there is no justification for what is going on in Spain. And the more I think and talk about it, the more assured I am that it is something cultural. I do not trust all those people shouting out there about "sharing" content on P2P platforms. But when I talk to more educated people, a majority of them seems to also believe that P2P users are not stealing content. And it really amazes me.

In this context, in my view, 'sharing" is just a way to justify "stealing". Period. You "share" a movie with someone at the other side of the P2P application and  you do not buy or rent the movie any more. That's reality. It worries me that people do not want to see this, but it worries me even more that people do really think that they actually doing something legal.

A number of legal measures are being analyzed by the Spanish government in order to regulate further these activities. The minister of culture is being attacked by lots of associations of internet users claiming that things are fine the way they are now. Culture of cheap (i.e. free) perks?

Return to the little kingdom

I finally finished yesterday "Return to the little Kingdom" by Michael Moritz. A Story about how Apple was founded and turned into a big company -though the story ends many years before the Apple we know today was created (the writer covers the most recent events in the brand new 2009 epilogue).

Anyway, I have not loved it. It is just ok. What I have loved the most is to feel the thrill of founding a company and make it grow, though it is obviously not an easy task.

I am posting below the review I have written on Amazon. I always use Amazon to see some reviews before I purchase something, so I find it fair to do the same for others.

Next on my shelf is "Too big to fail" on how Wall Street cracked a year and a half ago.

Litigation time

In the last couple of weeks I have read a number of news regarding litigation conflicts among important players in the TMT scene. It is amazing how a ruling in one way or another might have such a huge impact on a company's strategy going forward. An unfavorable one may force a company to change its plans overnight because of the burden imposed. On the other hand, a favorable one may bring a considerable boost to a company's cash reserves or clear the way for future actions.

For instance, today I have read that Google's Nexus One smartphone is facing an unexpected hurdle since the US Patent Office's has refused to register the phone's name, due fact that the "Nexus" name is registered by Integra Telecom, a telco operating in the Western US. After the release of the phone it seems to me like Google will have to pay Integra big time. Didn't anybody think about some basic due diligence?

On a separate pre-litigation - or maybe for litigation avoidance - note, it seems like Google is determined to pull out of China. I do not know whether Google is the new "evil" or not but I do value that the company is not giving in to the Chinese Government's blackmailing to censorship and is willing to leave the biggest world market (and to forego some yummy dollars).

A few days ago, a court finally dismissed Dish's appeal against a Tivo's lawsuit for DVR patent infringement. Thus, Tivo will be entitled to receive $300m in damages. As a result, Tivo's stock jumped 62%!!

Even Spain is seeing some action in this regard. At a time where the main private FTA channels are in merger discussions , Sogecable, owner of Cuatro", will have to pay cable provider Ono around 90m euros due to abuse of dominant position and a breach of a distribution contract. Some claim that these rulings may severely harm Sogecable's strategic plan for the coming years.

A snapshot of the internet era

Last Tuesday I was at the London city airport waiting to board for my flight to Madrid and I stopped by at the bookstore and got the last issue of Wired. First time I knew of this magazine was maybe 10 years ago, thank to a friend who was about to graduate in computer science engineering. I remember that at that time I - a law student - regarded it as a technical publication, a somewhat geeky one that was not the right reading for me at all. It was a few years later, upon my becoming interested in, and more knowledgeable about, the TMT biz, that I started to buy it from time to time as I noticed that it is more about trends and lifestyle than about core tech.

The thing is that when I bought it last Tuesday, after maybe a year since I had last got it, I realized I had idealized it too much. I was quite disappointed, I have to admit. Maybe it was just a poor issue, who knows...

Anyway, in this poor issue I was mentioning I particularly liked an article where the dot.com era was analyzed from different perspectives. One piece of the article was a two-entry chart where a number of things were plotted according to their degree of awesome/awful and for being lucrative/money bleeding. See below.

I find very funny - plus quite accurate - the evolution of Jerry Yang and the positioning of Mark Cuban and definitely agree with where Tivo, iPod and Dutch auction IPOs, to name a few. Simple but entertaining summary!

My online brand

The main reason why I decided to start this blog was the idea of building up my credible online brand on top of the Linkedins and the Facebooks of the world... and also of your own resume that you might use for job hunting from time to time. If you are passionate about something it is way more powerful to prove it by actually following it and writing about it in a recurring way  than by saying "I have always loved xyz".


Today I was taking a look at Fred Wilson's blog and his post "Own your online brand" caught my eye... and actually made quite happy (Fred is one of the most famous venture capitalists in the US and probably in the world). At the MBA Media & Entertainment Conference - which I attended twice in NY, both at Columbia and NYU - someone posed a question about the use of social media in job search, and in particular about employers' reaction to potential employees' online presence. A lot has been told about this, in particular regarding Facebook pictures and so forth. I have to admit that I am quite wary of them.


But what I really liked from Fred's post was the importance of building a "strong online presence" by managing and controlling your own online properties. This can easily be done by googling yourself. I have done so I can see my Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook profiles up there...and hopefully this blog will be next. In fact, Fred also comments that they "have hired all of our junior investment professionals largely on the basis of their blogs, not their resumes or linkedin profiles", which is quite impressive.


I feel like I am on the right track.

Super Bowl advertising: an event on its own

It's been some weeks since the 2010 Superbowl where the New Orleans Saints defeated the Payton Manning's  Indianapolis Colts. The Superbowl is one the biggest - if not the biggest in terms of audience - single sport event in the world. It is not a very popular sport in Spain but it is huge in the US and I was lucky to be living in NY when the Giants won a couple of years ago.

Massive sports events bring big advertising dollars with them and in this respect Superbowl is THE EVENT. I remember analyzing this back at Stern at professor Geeta Menon's marketing course (she is now at Wharton). Back in 2007, a 30-second spot on tv was priced at around $2.5m. This year it's been at around $3m. I could not believe it when I first knew about it.

But on top of the tv dollars, the internet revolution has provided advertisers with a big opportunity to leverage their investment in tv time. In addition to the 30-second spots, commercials are widely followed online, which increases the number of impacts and, in turn, brand awareness. In fact, the Superbowl has become a landmark event where corporations showcase their best creativity, to the extent that commercials themselves have become a very important part of the Superbowl. There exist a lot of expectations about who will be advertising and a huge buzz is generated after the game to assess who had the best commercial. This is pure gold for brands. The power of viral.

Visible Measures, a Boston-based start-up that measures online video audience which I had the opportunity to know about at a  NY Video 2.0 meetup in 2008, has conducted some research on the occasion of the 2010 Superbowl. According to their study, the top 20 commercials were viewed in aggregate more than 50 million times, being 'Doritos' House Rules" the one carrying the most views at 9+ million. I liked Google'(s) (!!), Megan Fox plays her usual part for Motorola, Dodge's is the typical commercial for men... and how couldn't I mention the eternal Bud's Clydesdale! You can find them all here.

New HBO online service

A few days ago I read about the beta testing of a new HBO site named HBO GO. The service is being tested by some subscribers and  considering how HBO usually does things, I am sure it will be great. Apparently the idea is to provide full availability to tv shows and movies. The catch is that you will need to be a cable subscriber to access the online service.

If the service is as good as I would expect it to be and considering the depth of HBO's library, I just wonder what the point of having a cable subscription would be. The only idea of having HBO anywhere  on your laptop is just great, so I guess that anyone who is a tv subscriber would be eager to sigh up for the online service.

HBO's current site is pretty slick so I am sure that whatever these guys come up with it will be cool.

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

From California to Catalonia, from the Bay Area to Barcelona. For three days starting today Barcelona will become the world hub for mobile by hosting the Mobile World Congress. I like Barcelona quite a lot and I had the chance to live there for 6 months a few years ago. But every time I think about it I still find it quite surprising (and superbly smart) how well the city positioned itself and opened up to the world by leveraging the 1992 Summer Olympics. If smart marketing was a person, it would be Barcelona.

Anyways, the big event from today has been the presentation - Steve Ballmer himself has been there - of the long awaited "Windows Phone". It is funny that this release comes just a few days weeks after Google did the same with its Nexus one. It seems like Microsoft is so often late to the party (the phone is supposedly meant to start selling a year from now!) and many wonder if it's taken them too long to make this move into the mobile world.

But from some pieces that I have read it seems like the Windows Phone, featuring the new Windows Mobile 7 OS, is quite promising and signals a significant departure from other OS like Android and the iPhone. Plus Microsoft is not planning to manufacture devices itself but partnering with hardware manufacturers. People also argue that the new OS is built on some of the strengths of the Zune and the Xbox, none of which I am familiar with (I have also read that Microsoft is not planning to allow integration of these devices with Mac computers...)

Samsung has laso presented the "Wave", its new smartphone featuring a new Samsung-branded OS that will carry  its own app store.

The battle for mobile devices is going to be enthralling in the coming months. The stakes are high and everyone ants to get a larger piece of people's time as we all spend more and more time with our cellphones. Wait and see

Outlets online

Tengo que comprar un regalo de cumple y ando un poco escaso de ideas, asi que se me ocurrio la opcion de investigar si es posible comprar un cheque regalo en alguno de los outlets de moda lideres en Espana. La verdad es que la busqueda no ha sido facil y por el momento solo Vente-Privee parece ofrecer dicha opcion.

No cabe duda de que este sector de los outlets se ha popularizado terriblemente en los ultimo anhos, a la luz de los descuentos de hasta el 70% que ofrecen en algunos de sus productos, todos ellos de primeras marcas. Los venture capitals se han encargado de insuflar el musculo financiero necesario para crecer, hasta el punto de que estos inversores estan presentes en la mayor parte de los outlets.

Dos son los principales operadores en Europa: el frances Vente-Privee (participado por el fondo norteamericano Summit Partners) y BuyVip (participada por los VCs Active, Bertelsmann, Cipio, Debaeque, Grupo Intercom y Kennet). Ademas, existen otros outlets de caracter mas espanol como  Privalia (participado por La Caixa, Insight, Nauta y Highland) y Outletic (centrado solo en material deportivo y participado por Bcn Business Angels).

En todo caso, para un no miembro de estos clubs de compras la informacion es limitada hasta el punto de que resulta dificil diferenciar y decidirse por cualquiera de ellos a priori. Estoy casi seguro de que  hasta hace no demasiado el acceso a estos clubs de compras era, en algunos casos, solo mediante invitacion, si bien ahora, en su esfuerzo por ganar mercado, cualquiera puede acceder a los mismos. Los venture capitals quieren ver cash flows y eso significa engordar la base de clientes.

Google Buzz

I wrote about Google's new tool yesterday without actually knowing that it was being released today!! So Google Buzz it is.

I have just tested it a little bit - such option appears automatically when you log on your Gmail account - and so far I have to stick with what I said yesterday. Plus the only idea of getting started with picking friends to follow and so forth from my list of contacts is just tiring...

I am giving it a go with 10 people I'm following and will see what happens. There has been a lot of buzz (easy joke) today about this. As usual, Techcrunch gives us some good insights about potential pros and cons.

2010 outlook: some predictions

I was just reading this post on MC Siegler's "Paris Lemon" and I thought it was worth sharing it with you. It is just about some of his predictions in the TMT space for 2010.

There are two of them on which I would bet:

#2: Microsoft unveiling its own cellphone... as it's been running late in the last decade.

#4: Chrome and Safari gaining market share... can't be otherwise with Apple selling more and more computers and more people being attracted by the Android calling

Google vs Facebook

I have just read today that Facebook is working on creating @facebook.com email -the so-called Project Titan- accounts and Google is considering setting up status updates on Gmail so you can see what your friends are up to. Interesting.

Gmail is a pretty good email service, offering lots of capacity and quite user-friendly. I still miss the typical folder structure because I am one of those who hates having a lot of stuff in his inbox and with Gmail that is exactly what happens. The labels that you can now attach to each emails somewhat replace such feature but to a lesser extent. Overall I am happy with Gmail and given that I have been using it for so long, I find it hard to think about changing overnight to Facebook mail or to any other. The only idea of replacing all my signing in details in every single site in which I am active or the transition process until everyone is aware that you have a new email account are big deterrents.

On the other hand, the move by Google to offer status updates to Gmail users is quite curious. At this point I do not really see myself using it. My audience is different on Gmail, Twitter and Facebook. As of today I make a difference between fun (Facebook) and work (Twitter-Linkedin) and that is why I to not have updates in sync. Audiences differ and I do not necessarily want one audience being aware of some issues and vice versa. My Gmail contacts at this point include people from both audiences so it would be hard for me to filter. The fact that people are spending so much time on Facebook might be a little worrisome for Google and the status update move might work in that direction.

TV shows: the media turtle

There is little doubt that the internet and technology overall have changed the consumption patterns of media. From cds to Spotify, from the Blockbuster across the street to Netflix, from your weekly tv show to Hulu, from the typical movie at a theater to Avatar, from your free-to-air tv to Boxee. From your local theater or home tv to your laptop. But not only have they changed habits, they have changed - or more accurately, they have forced to change - business models.

I am an avid tv shows fan. But I have a problem: I live in Spain and I think that Spanish tv, on average, sucks. Is it because I have lived for a long time in the country that we identify with the showbiz? Maybe...or maybe not. Perhaps it is just about quality.

I mean this because when I think about how things have changed in the media arena in the last years, I feel like the tv show business  is a turtle surrounded by cheetahs. And I pretty much refer to the fact that it is still treated more as a domestic thing than some of its media brothers and sisters.

There is no doubt that viewers all over the globe value good content, regardless its country of origin. A nice movie, relevant news, an addicting tv show... But at the end of the day the industry treats them in a completely different way. Can anyone think of, for example, Avatar being released in Europe 5 months after it is so in the US? Likewise, probably even more obvious, nobody would see the Superbowl or the NBA Finals a week after they are played. But with tv shows it is a completely different story.

As I was saying, I live in Spain and I can't access Hulu, I can't see the last episode of House on Fox.com, I can't buy episodes on iTunes, I have to suffer the previous season on Spanish tv and see the same old boxes on music stores. It sucks.

Why is it like that? Of course I am aware of distribution rights and so forth. But if the windows for movie releases has just shortened (work needs to be done, though, to take a few more steps ahead), please do the same with tv shows. I hate being unable to share my views simply because I am gonna have to wait for months to catch up with my friends. I strongly believe that a huge development is needed.

 I strongly support the real globalization of the business. If the whole world wears Nikes, Reeboks and a couple of other brands, why isn't it possible for us to consume HBOs and Showtimes? Instead, we are force to consume what we don't like and to look for shady ways (piracy) that damage the business and that makes our experience way less enjoyable. I know it will take time but maybe one day...