MediaFile

Archery is the ‘new’ curling? I don’t think so, NBC

Liana B. Baker

Aug 3, 2012 17:32 EDT

Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s president of research and development, said on the network’s Olympics conference call Thursday that archery is the new curling.

As a former “vice skip”* on my high school’s curling team, I have a message for Mr. Wurtzel: archery is no curling, sir.

Of course I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek here and I’m not that offended. Plus, Wurtzel has some compelling numbers to back up his claim.

He said curling was the most-viewed Olympics sport on cable this year, even ranking ahead of basketball and its TV-ready athletes like LeBron James

“Archery is the new curling. The numbers for archery have been nothing less than huge,” said Wurtzel. “It delivered an average of 1.5 million cable viewers, the highest rated cable sport, beating out basketball. Now maybe it’s the Hunger Games phenomenon, or Brady Ellison orKhatuna Lorig who taught Jennifer Lawrence how to shoot for the film,  it really doesn’t matter but we’re going to keep an eye on that.”

I have to admit that even I got caught up in the archery hype. I reveled in the nail-biting suspense of the U.S. archery team’s silver medal performance Saturday and watched as members tried to nail bullseyes under pressure.

But as a former curler from Canada, I couldn’t help but feel a little treasonous listening to NBC on Thursday. Curling is not as popular as hockey by any means but it’s still one of the frozen national pastimes back home. And it’s spilled over the border too–curling’s popularity has been steadily growing in the U.S. since the last Winter Olympics, according to this AP story.

Yuri Milner: Funding the impractical in physics

Sarah Lacy

Aug 1, 2012 09:51 EDT

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on PandoDaily.com. It is being republished with permission.

Well, this is a different side of Yuri Milner… The famed Russian tech investor and founder of Russian Web giant Mail.ru, has launched the Milner Foundation, with the aim of doing nothing more than advancing our knowledge of the universe.

The $27 million foundation will annually award $3 million to fundamental physicists doing great work. And just let them keep doing that work. There are no expectations to be met, no commercialization that has to come out of it. Milner simply thinks it’s important that we understand the universe better than we do now. ”My background is in theoretical physics, and it’s something very close to my heart,” he said in an interview from Moscow this morning. “We, as a mankind, are not rewarding the best fundamental scientists the way we should, and this is one way to do that.”

On one hand, this development seems surprisingly impractical for a man who up to now has been like a heat-seeking missile, finding highly practical – if unconventional – new ways to upend the tech investing world. Milner has pulled off something that almost no one else has as long as I’ve been covering Silicon Valley: He came in from the outside, saw a gaping hole in a venture market that everyone thought was oversaturated with cash, and was so right that he forced many of the most powerful Valley insiders to radically change their game plan.

Put simply, there was a clear liquidity gap in the market, as companies like Facebook didn’t want to go public. He solved it.

Sure, VCs pooh-poohed his approach at first as merely overpaying without board representation. But entrepreneurs loved it – witness Zynga’s Mark Pincus calling Milner the ideal investor at last month’s PandoMonthly. As Web giants put off going public longer and Milner’s spoils became even bigger, many of the biggest investors pulled an about-face and outright stole his playbook.

NBC’s Olympic contortions

John C Abell

Jul 31, 2012 17:43 EDT

It’s a toss-up which of this summer’s Olympics controversies will be the one most remembered. Twitter’s censorship (er, enforcement of terms of service) of an NBC critic and Empty Seat-gate are strong contenders. But for me NBC’s decision to tape-delay and edit live events after bragging that it would provide unprecedented real-time online access takes the gold.

Somehow our emotional attachment to television — and not video — remains incredibly strong. How else to explain the torrent of hate begat by NBC’s online blackout and broadcast delay of the Olympics opening ceremony in a day and age when alternatives and workarounds abound and time-shifting itself is considered a basic human right?

No, this feels like an “Occupy TV” moment: We, the 99 percent are galled that NBC won’t give us what we want when we want it, and that NBC is doing it because of a profit motive that requires it to manufacture appointment TV.

Over the weekend, Dan Levy, of sports site Bleacher Report, tweeted: “Folks, to think NBC cares about our complaints is ridiculous. They don’t care about sports fans. They care about ratings. We knew this.” NYU professor and media watchdog Jay Rosen tweeted in response: “Have you ever noticed how often people use the word ‘ratings’ as a synonym for ‘…so  just shut up.’”

NBC can, more or less, do what it wants with the games as it paid $1.2 billion for them. Its goal is to make a profit despite the eye-popping licensing fee and the tens of millions more in production costs. It is about the ratings, like it or not.

But would ratings suffer if NBC unleashed all the video on the Web and aired marquee events live?

Intel Outside: Chipmaker’s VC chief sees opportunity outside the US

The venture arm of the world-beating chipmaker Intel Capital is increasingly looking outside the U.S. for deals– and finding them in places ranging from Ghana to Turkey.

“We are seeing a lot more dealflow outside the U.S.” said Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani, an Indian-born globetrotter who believes the trend will continue– if only because that’s where most of the world economy is.

The firm, which plans to invest $300-$500 million this year, is putting its money where Sodhani’s mouth is. Recent investments include Rancard, a Ghana-based company that provides cloud-based software for mobile services, and Kupivip, a Russian ecommerce business. That’s a far cry from most VCs, who if they invest outside the US at all, tend to stick to markets like westsern Europe– or for the more adventurous, Brazil and China.

Of Intel’s 33 new deals so far this year, 56 percent of dollars spent went overseas, Sodhani said. That compares to 51 percent for all of last year.

Of its six portfolio companies that completed IPOs year to date, half came from outside the US: Sinosun, a security-chip company based in China; MCX, a commodities-exchange in India; and AVG, a computer-security company founded in the Czech Republic.

Still, Sodhani– who was born in India and got his undergraduate degree in Britain before moving to the US– has a long way to go before catching up with the parent company. There, about 75 percent of revenue comes from outside the U.S.

Facebook needs a new CEO

John C Abell

Jul 26, 2012 17:44 EDT

Facebook has now gone through its first trial by fire as a public company, slightly exceeding revenue expectations (with $1.18 billion) but showing a big loss in its first reported quarter ($157 million). Facebook shares were pummeled in after-hours trading; the company’s market cap has been slashed in half in just 10 weeks.

This is a bad, bad situation for Facebook’s early shareholders, 97% of whom are individual, retail investors – unlike those at the other big tech titans, which are majority-held by institutions: Google (68%) and Apple (67%). That Facebook’s percentage is so high suggests that Facebook is a stock for the masses. The masses need a hero.

That hero is not Mark Zuckerberg. He needs to get out of the way – not because we can judge him a disaster based on a single’s earnings period, but because he isn’t playing to his strength. He’s letting down the average folks who saw something shiny and new, but are now seeing shades of overhyped tech redux.

Facebook needs its spiritual leader and chief innovator in a hoodie. But it doesn’t need him as CEO, placating investors in a collared shirt. There are plenty of people who could manage the Facebook business. But there’s only one Mark, who needs to focus on product strategy, not investor relations.

I’ve made no secret that I’m wary of Facebook’s prospects, that I don’t think it can become as successful as a business as it has been as a social network. Zuckerberg himself confessed the obvious only days ago: Mobile is the challenge, especially when it comes to making money. And it’s a big one as members increasingly use Facebook on smartphones and tablets instead of a traditional computer.

But the meta-problem for Facebook is how we think of the company. Now we think of it first as a company – not a service. Felix Salmon summed up the dilemma in a post headlined: “Why going public sucks …”

Bluefin Labs names former Razorfish, Publicis exec as CEO

Jennifer Saba

Jul 25, 2012 15:05 EDT

Bluefin Labs– a company that tracks a brand’s perception on social media sites while a commercial airs on TV– has named a new CEO.  JP Maheu has signed on with the fledgling company as CEO while its co-founder Deb Roy will take up the role of chairman.

Maheu was most recently the global CEO of Publicis Modem, the digital marketing arm of Publicis Worldwide, and has also served stints as CEO of Razorfish and chief digital officer at Ogilvy & Mather.

Bluefin provides technology that allows network programmers as well as advertisers to track what people are saying about specific products or TV shows on social media such as Twitter or Facebook.

The company raised $12 million in a Series B round led by Time Warner Investments and also included SoftBank Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Lerer Ventures.

TV Content wars, blackouts could spur M+A

Liana B. Baker

Jul 19, 2012 13:52 EDT

Evercore analyst Bryan Kraft believes the prolonged blackout that has left DirecTV’s 20 million subscribers without MTV, Comedy Central or Nickelodeon for a week, could lead to some industry consolidation.

In a research note out late Wednesday night, the analyst said if content providers Viacom, as well as home of ‘Breaking Bad’,AMC, which was dropped from No. 2  satellite provider Dish Network in July, get the upper hand, it raises the chances of a merger between satellite companies and cable providers.

If DirecTV and Dish comes out the winners, he said, it encourages cable TV networks to merge, but only when their valuations fall. DirecTV has pushed backed against what it claims are exorbitant increases in Viacom’s programming fees that it says it does not want to pass on to customers.

And DirecTV viewers aren’t the only ones suffering. Kraft estimates that the dispute is making Viacom lose about $14 million a week. Meanwhile DirecTV would need to lose 1.15 million subscribers before its cash flow was impacted. Kraft said that if DirecTV expects to lose more than 1.15 million subscribers, it should pay up the $3 per subscriber fee Viacom is likely seeking.

As one of the most high profile blackouts stretches into its second week, time will tell whether the spat will be the one that changes the pay TV landscape for good or whether it just causes viewers to change the channel.

Twist – a new app for the punctuality-challenged

Alexei Oreskovic

Jul 18, 2012 12:44 EDT

The minds of Silicon Valley have yet to find the cure for tardiness, but they have figured out a way to make being late less rude.

A new app call Twist notifies friends and colleagues when you’re running late, calculating the estimated time of arrival to your destination on-the-fly and zipping off text messages to the people waiting for you.

The free app, available on Wednesday for iOS devices, can be used for trips by car, bike, foot and public transportation in most major U.S. cities. In development for the past year, the app’s algorithms crunch through various data streams, such as the average speed you travel and real-time traffic patterns, to calculate ETAs that co-founder Mike Belshe says are 98 percent accurate.

Belshe, a former Google employee who was a founding member of the Chrome group, teamed-up to create Twist with Bill Lee, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has backed Tesla and Posterous.

“A lot of guys are just focused on ‘where,’” said Lee, referring to the spate of location apps that have flooded the App Store in recent years. “We’re the first to focus on ‘when.’”

The San Francisco-based company has $6 million in funding from backers including Bridgescale Partners, Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, Eric Hahn, the former chief technology officer of Netscape, as well as Lee and Belshe.

Besides making life easier for the serially late, Twist is touting its safety aspect:  no need to risk an accident while driving so that you can text your friends to let them know you’re going to be late. The company even commissioned a survey by Harris Interactive that found that 24 percent of Americans admit to having sent a text or email while driving to notify someone that they were on their way.

Mayer can’t save Yahoo – because Yahoo can’t be saved

Kevin Kelleher

Jul 18, 2012 12:00 EDT

Yahoo eats CEOs. The perennially ailing company lures talented managers into the corner suite of its Silicon Valley headquarters, then it sucks their good reputations out of their veins and casts them aside. They inevitably pass through the revolving door an empty shell of their former selves.

Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz, Scott Thompson. All took the CEO helm with visions of invigorating Yahoo into an Internet leader for the 21st century. Most became mired in Yahoo’s stubbornly byzantine culture. And all probably collected their severance checks wishing to themselves they’d never heard of the company with its stupid hillbilly name and its superfluous punctuation mark.*

Now it’s Marissa Mayer’s turn. Mayer – an early Google hire who instrumentally forged its successes in search, maps and online email – has become such a positive, likable presence in Silicon Valley that I actually felt sorry for her when I heard it was her time to be Yahoo’s help. A failed tenure as Yahoo’s CEO couldn’t happen to a better-qualified candidate.

Mayer’s appointment was something of a bombshell – many people expected Yahoo would appoint Ross Levinsohn, a seasoned ex-News Corp executive, as CEO. In the Internet industry of 2012, the gambit boils down to advertising versus engineering – which is to say, vision versus monetization. Any good Web company wants the sweet spot that welcomes both. With Levinsohn, Yahoo would have got an ad guy to oversee a product that is largely computer code. With Mayer, Yahoo gets an engineer with executive experience.

Three years ago, Mayer signaled that she was ready for a new company. Mayer, famously, was responsible early on for the invitingly spartan homepage of Google.com. Later she had a hand in core features like Gmail, Google News and Image Search. During her five years as vice-president for Google’s search and user experience, she oversaw some of the company’s biggest projects, balancing the site’s intuitive interface with the need to generate more ad revenue from it.

In recent years, her trajectory seemed to lose energy. Nearly two years ago, Mayer made a move seen by some as a demotion. She was sidelined from search into local initiatives. At the time, local was key to Google’s push into the mobile web, but it also became an area where Google lost ground to Facebook, Groupon, Yelp and others.

Finally, a reason to exclaim Yahoo!

John C Abell

Jul 17, 2012 14:15 EDT

Forget the cloud wars, the tablet wars and whither Digg. The summer tech news doldrums just got a jolt. Now we have a real story.

One of Google’s earliest and most respected employees, the highly visible Marissa Mayer, has left the search giant to become the CEO of Yahoo. This kind of thing doesn’t happen all that often, since Google is still one of the top workplaces in Silicon Valley and, even with its stock price well off historical highs, still considered an ascendant company in the high-stakes, “live fast and die hard” high-tech industry.

But most interesting is why Mayer is moving on: Not to relive her youth at a startup and prove that she isn’t a one-hit wonder. No, Mayer has agreed to move not to the garage but to the corner office to fix one of the tech industry’s most infamous basket cases.

And with that, Mayer becomes one of the most prominent women CEOs not only in the Valley but in corporate America. For trivia fans she is also Yahoo’s second female CEO: Carol Bartz was fired less than a year ago. At 37, Mayer is also the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Mayer was Google employee No. 20, and the executive responsible for Google’s search page, Gmail, Google News, Images and Maps — many of the things that most people associate with the company. She was even in charge of the Google Doodle program, which playfully changed the Google logo for special occasions.

But despite her strong street cred and the confidence of founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, it was not likely that she would run Google, at least anytime soon, since the founders are so young and one of them, Page, is only just back in the corner office.

So it’s a flyer for Mayer – and where better than at Yahoo, which brought on its own curse of the Bambino with Jerry Yang’s sloppy rejection of Microsoft’s merger proposal. As Thomas Edison is said to have said: “To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Same goes for reinvention.