SpectatorBytes

This past Monday, Apple announced that they had sold two million iPads worldwide in less than 2 months. I am not surprised. When the device first came out, many tech reviewers were disappointed that it did not include many of the features of the iPhone, such as a camera or USB port. Others complained that [...]

There are two major forces poised to significantly simplify the way we interact with the Web over the next few years. In the process, the drastic simplification will anoint the Web as King of All Media (sorry, Howard).  The first one is mobile applications and the second one is the social graph.  A“simpler, easier-to-use” Web [...]

The digital media landscape continues to evolve at a significant pace, with new forces disrupting the market dynamics every 12 months. This is one of the reasons why digital media companies of all sizes continue to struggle to sustain revenue and profit growth long-term. As I have mentioned in previous posts, digital businesses need to [...]

Upon learning of Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, very few industry people (myself included) were surprised that Facebook needed to acquire a company to bring in talent to compete with Twitter. However, if one takes a step back, this news should have at least raised an eyebrow. Currently, Facebook is one of the hottest digital media [...]

Recently, Techcrunch had an interesting article about the death of digital divisions inside major media companies. Techcrunch argued that the slowdown in M&A will mean that  most digital initiatives will now be led by the traditional divisions rather than by “digital” divisions. While this may be the case in the short-term, I believe that major [...]

I have written several posts about the need for offering innovative ad solutions to brand advertisers. I wanted to share a couple of solutions for brand advertisers that two companies in our portfolio have developed (obviously I have a vested interest in the success of these two companies). Nevertheless, I think that they are offering [...]

Much is being written today about the imminent downturn in the economy and how it has started to impact overall business activity (see here). This has gotten me thinking about what are the potential implications for the digital media community over the next 18-24 months. Realities: – Consumers’ online usage will continue to increase at [...]

A couple of days ago, Fred Wilson posted an interesting note on the future of the music business (see here). Fred’s main point was that streaming will likely emerged as the new model for music online. Fred posits that given the increased availability of connectivity and portable connected devices, streaming will eventually prove to be [...]

Today’s major news headline is NewsCorp’s FIM sales reorganization (see here). While internal politics have been blamed for the changes in the blogosphere, in an strategic sense, I would expect the move to further help FIM built its brand advertising revenues. Here are some of the reasons why: – Increases focus on creating “scalable” custom [...]

Much has been said about Web 1.0 companies struggling to adapt to the current dynamics of the Web. No need to call it Web 2.0. The Web has simply evolved and conditions changed. The list of changes is pretty evident: – Broadband penetration has reached full scale – Product development costs have fallen dramatically – [...]

There has been some recent posts discussing the impact of the Web on other media. Today’s Techcrunch post on publishing and blogging is the latest example of that (see here). In my view, these editorials are signals that the Web is finally coming on its own as a medium. This got me thinking about what [...]

Some interesting news came out GM today (see GM roars Forward Into Digital Ad Channels). This suggests brand advertisers are finally ready to commit significant spending to digital media. This is certainly good news for the industry, and in particular for companies that are creating solutions specifically designed to serve brand advertisers. GM’s decision is [...]

Traditional and digital media companies have begun to recognize the need to use M&A to build their business. Acquisitions are increasingly becoming a critical source of product innovation, specialist talent (see my previous post Product Development: Specialists Win), new audiences, new customers, etc. This is a trend that I expect to become more prevalent in [...]

Over the past few years, I have been amazed about how much time is spent by analysts discussing the differences between media and technology companies. Are companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon media or technology companies? What I have come to realize is that they are neither one nor the other. Digital media companies represent a [...]

In this morning’s earning call, CBS announced that they plan to make $21M dollars in online ad revenues from March Madness (See here: CBS: March Madness To Net $21M Online) CBS indicated that these revenues would be incremental to the ad revenues generated by the CBS TV network and stations. While this statement may have [...]