Linden Labs was founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale (also my former employer). It’s really not all that mainstream right now which is a shame because it’s really cool. Basically, you get to use their tools to build your own virtual world. You can build homes, buy cars, buy, sell, trade…even go to concerts. Looks like Jeff Bezos likes it too.
Archive for March, 2006
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I expect a lot of consolidation in the video space. I had previously posted that MetaStories was a nice target. They got bought by MetaStories. Much newer companies like www.cuts.com seem interesting and some companies like YouTube weren’t especially innovative but executed perfectly. YouTube isn’t that old but it’s already a valuable property. And, my old favorites (props to Mika) like Atom Films would clearly be interesting and valuable to much larger companies. 2006 is going to be fun in the video space…
I’m starting to see a lot of consolidation in the digital media space. Some of these start-up companies like Metastories are getting bought by larger companies and smaller upstarts like YouTube would otherwise be called “web2.0″ companies if they weren’t called “digital media” companies. But, the point remains that I totally expect much, much more consolidation in the Web2.o space just as I expect to see the same in digital media throughout 2006 and into early 2007. The leading 2.0 companies, like Riya will get scooped up as will thePlatform. The remaining 2.0 companies without great business models or unique, defensible technologies will not get much more press (such as Ajax desktops like www.netvibes.com and will fade into obscurity. You better be selling something that stands out or you better have some pretty amazing technology if you don’t have a good commerce plan. These companies that sort of fall in the middle are going to have a hard time. I’m also referring to those companies who’s revenue plan is Google AdSense. AtomFilms makes sense as an ad driven business because advertisers pay more for rich media centric traffic. But, starting another MySpace with some kind of spin that’s just unique by a hair? I worry for them. Are they worrying for themselves?
I had coffee with Toby Padilla, CEO and founder of Musicmobs yesterday. These guys have been quietly working away in the social music scene for the last two years though other sites like Last.fm and Pandora are getting all the press. These kinds of services allow you to specify a favorite artist, based on which you immediately receive an Internet audio stream of similar music. Sharing of your playlists with others so that you can find other playlists that might appeal to you is a big part of the concept. So let’s start by saying that what these and similar services do is both very interesting and dare I say…nearly necessary for hardcore music lovers. Most music-discovery systems have been social recommenders, also known as collaborative filters. You know about the concept of collaborative filters because Amazon popularized the notion - “if you like this then you might also like this other stuff”.
Basically, these types of systems provides music lovers a plug-in that automatically monitors your I-tunes package so that whatever you listen to can be incorporated into your profile and thus be used as the basis for recommendations. Over time, a preference profile is built. By comparing the preference profiles of its listeners, the system can predict what songs a particular listener might like, based on the overlap with other listeners with similar tastes. These systems are basically about delivering the right music to the right ears with the least possible amount of hassle. That’s nice because making playlists isn’t actually a lot of fun but having them is a godsend. Discovering new music THAT YOU WILL LIKE is also hit and miss. How do you typically find new artists that you fall in love with? Think about it. You hear about it from a friend.
In the case of Musicmobs, all the world is your musical friend and they are there to help you enjoy more music. Oh, and vice versa.
Very soon, these kinds of services will be considered an integral part of your music discovery and listening regime. This is all a bit harder than it sounds. There can be algorithmic work, tons of data crunching (data center considerations and just mass data handling concerns) and lots of various bits of software to develop to include support for new features, new plug-in support for other music packages and much more. Thanks to guys like Musicmobs for keeping after it. I like em…
This is what reputation earns you…a very big credit line.
I guess one would have to assume that they have some companies and sectors in mind before going and doing something like this. Still, it’s a pretty interesting structure.
Joshua Jaffe wrote a great article over at theDeal about how Web2.0 may not signal any significant trend in VC habits as some have suggested. I’m no VC but I totally agree. Here at Curious Office we’re trying to build products and we’re trying to build companies but I don’t think we’re trying to build a Broadcom. Or, a Cisco. These kinds of efforts need VC dollars and they always will. That Writely sold to Google and never raised outside equity in the process shouldn’t suggest at all that VC’s got “blocked out”. In fact, I know that Writely had been soliciting many VC’s before selling the company. Most said “neat but no”. Others enlightened them and said “neat but you should sell now and not raise a bunch of money”. Hence, the Google sale. The only thing I would suggest in response to this article is that IT’S OK TO INVEST IN A PRODUCT THAT ISN’T A COMPANY. We did it with FeedDigest. It’s not a black or white issue. It’s a question of how much capitalization you are talking about. It’s on that basis that we started Curious Office.
We’ve been toying with Yahoo’s user interface library a bit over the last week. This is the beginning of Yahoo’s own efforts to further solidify their own position as a purveyor of web2.0 goodness. Expect API’s to enable extensions into certain Yahoo systems and further expect…over time…that access to some of these services will be commericial in nature. Until then, enjoy this first generation bit of goodness. There is some neat stuff in there and these components will save tons of design, development and testing time. We’ve used the slider and it does work pretty well. The Slider Control is used in a web application as a visual replacement for an input box that takes a number as input. Lot’s of other cool toys too…
Some of my friends know that Curious Office has been quietly working away on an internal project called ImageKind. But, what is it? We don’t think anything particularly innovative has been done in the art space in about 10 years. But, with all this digital photography, photoshop, illustrator files, captures of actual paintings etc…I venture to guess that something really cool can be done that marries the web with people’s creativity. To put it very succinctly: I want to develop a framework that ultimately grows into the world’s largest online art community. I hope to release beta to a private audience May 1 and then to general public something in the first week or two of July. Stay tuned!
MetaStories has been around since forever in Internet years and yet nobody really knows them. But, we at the office of curiosity know them and we like. Brian Monnin is the founder and used to work as a producer over at MSNBC.com I thought of these guys because my partner and I had lunch with Merrill Brown today who in fact was Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com back in the mid 90’s. Merrill works closely with MetaStories who does quite a bit of business in the newspaper publishing space because a) newspapers need to publish on the web a lot and b) they don’t know how to do that very well. Basically, they have a system that allows very, very non-technical folk to develop presentations that include nteractivity, animation, photography, audio and video into extremely sexy flash packages which are ready for export to the site. You could go so far as to say that it is the best way for producers to leverage Flash presentation ability without really knowing any actionscript at all.
I predict a bright future for this little Seattle based company.
I’m from the digital media world - that’s audio and video to the web2.o crew. I’m amazed at how many of the web2.o fraternity don’t know about http://www.paidcontent.org. It’s one of the best blogs for getting news on anything at the crossroads of entertainment and technology. Good reading each and every day.
Ok so along with the rest of the blog fraternity (and I do mean that in generic male/female kind of way) I’ll have to cast my vote for who it was that Fox said they bought amidst a room full of companies.
I predict Meetro.
Let’s see if I’m right 
Now this was an interesting post about Newsvine…our Seattle neighbor just barely off the blocks…
Fox drools over menu at Web 2.0 buffet: You couldn’t have kicked off more clucking and squawking if you’d thrown a fox into a henhouse. The henhouse, in this case, was the Under The Radar event Thursday focusing on (and I use the term reluctantly) Web 2.0 companies, and the fox was Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media. In an interview with Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington, Levinsohn said Fox had acquired one of the 32 companies represented at the event (but not which one) and added that he wouldn’t be surprised if as many as five of the companies ended up in the den, given that Fox Interactive has $2 billion burning a hole in its pocket. Bawk! Commence the clucking. Will it be Newsvine, which is barely out of the womb? Or maybe photo-search outfit Riya, still in beta? Or maybe Goowy, which wants to help you manage your digital lifestyle? Expect much pecking and scratching to follow.
Yes its true. I maintain a personal blog too. That’s a lot of blogging! Check it out over at http://www.kellysmith.com
