SpectatorBytes

The much expected news of a Yahoo re-organization has gotten me thinking about what the ideal organization is for internet divisions/conglomerates to foster growth and innovation.
Since I believe interactive networks will primarily grow/scale through acquisitions of products and services over the next few years, they would benefit from designing an organizational structure to support [...]

Yesterday, as part as our annual gathering of portfolio companies, I had the opportunity to meet a group of high school and college students from the Los Angeles area. There were about 15 kids between the ages of 16-20. 65% boys and 35% girls. The session was focused on learning about their media consumption [...]

A good friend of mine, who works in digital media, recently expressed its frustration with Web businesses: ” Why can these businesses be more simple; They are just not easy businesses.” Any digital media entrepreneur or executive is likely to agree with this statement. Building or operating businesses on the Web continue to be [...]

Acquisitions have emerged as an essential capability for digital media players to build scale and drive product innovation. The digital media business has become hit-driven and increasingly hyper-competitive. As a result, building a successful Web business is increasingly hard for anyone but particularly for corporate media players. This is leading most media players [...]

For content producers and providers, the Web is bound to create significant value in the middle. Much has been said about the Web’s long-tail over the past few years, and certainly many companies are focused on the “head” since most offline models have been built around the “head”. However, the middle – which some [...]

Microsoft’s control over Yahoo has reminded me about the importance of “religion” to succeed in technology. I believe “religion” is one of the key underlying reasons why Yahoo’s management and board has resisted Microsoft’s overture.
Digital media companies are founded and scaled around a particular “set of beliefs.” These beliefs reflect a particular way [...]

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
- Infrastructure [...]