Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man

Category Archives: Web 1.0

identifing areas requiring acceleration, de-emphasis or integration.

Posted by Ben Barren on February 4, 2009 – 10:04 am

Filed under Web 1.0

The valued at $1B in the private equity deal that gave James Packer dollars $4b-$5B i can’t remember ninemsn, cut 10% of staff via The Australian on a media centric Wednesday, but what amazes me isn’t the sackings - lets face it, private equity is struggling and owning a high cpm relatively untargeted display (cross-media) ad business that externally is the meat in the Facebook on one hand consumer driver, and Google on the performance search clicks on the other, while internally it competes with its own not #1 TV older brother - what I was saying, amazed me is u dont hear for 4 months from Joe Pollard, the post Tony Faure CEO, and then u get this absolutely A+ on the corporate pr_speak buzzword bingo. And blaming an agency for the language which would have been word for word approved, doesnt count... Frontline Mike Moore indeed;

Trust Me S1E2 Was Alot better than E1

The Australian (Media) : “Ninemsn has identified areas within our business requiring acceleration, de-emphasis or integration to ensure the ongoing market leadership, operational efficiency and continued growth of our company,” ninemsn’s public relations agency Access said. “Given this organisational restructure, a number of staff have been impacted through revised positions, promotions or leaving the organisation.”

The guy from Ed is more annoying than the guy from Will and Grace, but that is meant to be the case. Ep 2 is alot more like a big agency is, while ep 1 wasnt. And as u'd expect it doesnt show clients, management, or creatives in at all a good light, I guess thats why i like it. Well more than I did. But it would have to be bad for me to not watch it, a show about ad agencies. Where i worked first after all at DDB then ninemsn second, both a lifetime again.

Trust Me does have Great Opening Credits.

Maybe Access can figure out how to use Azureus + VLC player to watch themselves some Trust Me, I agree with Clique Clack TV blog on S1E1 vs E2 : “Things are improving on the set of Will & Ed, er, I mean Trust Me. While I won’t say that I’ve completely separated myself yet from the earlier television personas of Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanaugh, I can say that I am finding myself enjoying their foray into the world of advertising. Whereas the pilot left me just kind of disliking Cavanagh’s Conner, I found him acting much more like an adult here.”

Read Clique Clack TV Blog on Trust Me : "I know that creative types can be touchy and a bit prone to childish outbursts, but come on man! He was so ridiculously babyish last week and then suddenly this week he’s completely supportive of Mason’s (McCormack) promotion. Still problematic in the character department for me is Sarah Krajicek-Hunter (Monica Potter). So far, she’s done a lot of bitching, and despite being a high profile “get” for the agency, we haven’t seen anyone give her a chance to do much of anything. I at least thought we might get to see her lines for Arc Mobile at the end of this episode, considering how things turned out."

content is king, 2 AOL anyway, maybe.

Posted by Ben Barren on January 29, 2009 – 6:24 pm

Filed under Web 1.0

Watching 2nd ep of Lie To Me with Tim Roth!

While entrepreneurship may be an addiction as Betaworks aptly twitter, and I do have a Masters in Venture Capital/Entrepreneurship and do like working on the investing side (who wouldnt!) corporate strategy at the intersection of large media/entertainment/online companies, is always an attractive area 2spend yer time, in the way u can combine/divest/buy/sell/re-focus assets. I like the GigaOm content is king summary (in the same week AOL are shutting down WeblogsInc blogs that they wont sell back to Calacanis, who quit blogging - but seems to have started again with a big post on Internet Asperger’s Syndrome which nicely lays the blame on the internet/technology/websites etc for rich/people in control of operations being assholes- having worked for/around a few in my time), but seems to have enough user generated content channels to get his message out there:) So back to Gigaom and AOL :

“Time Warner might be happier getting rid of everything except the content properties of AOL, which it could turn into the cornerstone of Time Warner’s digital strategy.. What Time Warner needs to do is combine MediaGlow, AOL Music, AOL Video, TMZ and AOL Entertainment. A smaller, more focused combined entity would play to Time Warner’s core strength: content. And by hiving off everything else, the company would also get some much-needed cash. As an amusing aside, I would like to point out that Time Warner had absorbed AOL’s access business into its financials — a smart move. I think it’s a business that despite declining throws off cash like crazy, most recently to the tune of over $700 million. And in these fiscally challenged times, as we have learned, cash is king.”

A Little Present, Watching this 2nite. Lie To Me S1E2. Click2watch

Video Warz : Sergey/Brin 1st : Rupe 2nd.

Posted by Ben Barren on January 6, 2009 – 12:47 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Gadget_Lust, Web 1.0

Some quick news from Lindz MySpace : “little piece of TRUE information: we did NOT break up! access hollywood, extra, et, every tabloid, page six… AND every GOSSIP website. Get your stories straight please. It’s really annoying to have all of your friends emailing you saying, i saw, i read, etc… NOT TRUE”

My Fave Welder, by Uboat Designer for $770 Click.

In a LiLo/Sam paparazzi video soundbite driven world, the sheer reach of YouTube means it will always be a vsmart buy by GOOGmeister. And Rupe’s MySpace Video plus Hulu private equity funded $1bn startup valuation is equally shrewd. I’m just wondering when the Hulu video golds of river will drop for Australia’s TV networks who can get together and get Private Equity, heck why not Ch7 backer Kravis Kohlberg the original Barbarian at the Gate, and place Australian TV programming online, ad supported ala Hulu. And given Hulu raised $100m @ $1b valuation first round (watch the Arrington/DeWolfe Paris Hilton dating interview vid) the private equity guys can claw back some of those losses by increasing the average multiple of their media assets by adding a Hulu Downunder like asset. That’s a play I’d like to be involved in.

Nice Royal Blue Supra Ellingtons

But reason why Rupert Murdoch doesnt care about Aussie TV businesses, like Channel 10, is that he has Newscorp’s founding stake in Hulu, plus MySpace Video - with post Palin/Fey election momentum. He’s miles behind Sergey and Brin due to their fortitude in be willing to fight and pay music studios for compensation for music video plays, but #2 by consumer reach only isn’t a bad place to be, lets face it there is no #3, when u can sell traditional TV brands for alot higher CPM. Either way, Google and Newscorp pretty much own video online. Even if CBS want TV.com to become a major lean back destination . It’s just a bonus that video usage is up 40% / 08′ usage.

Some Reebok HighTops

So ancillary questions like who will Facebook partner with in Music (or will record labels go to hulu).. and by extension Film and Television, suddenly become interesting. What if Facebook diversify their terabytes of photos from the flickr playbook and increasingly encourage video uploads plus some studio deals. Anyway, video is game on, where the party’s at. Anyways I could go on here, but in 2009 a Hulu.com play will hit downunder, and that is one seat at a table (depending on which table becomes The Table of course) I definitely want to be commissioned for.

Comscore Video Usage Nov 08

Comscore research via Broadstuff.com : “The amount of time U.S. Internet users spend watching video is up an impressive 40 percent year over year. Watchers tuned in for 273.1 minutes of online video in the month of November 2008, up from 195 minutes in November 2007, according to comScore.”

Catch some Supernatural Sanctuary, S01 Online; Click.

BTW, Picasa is finally available on OSX, well at least at a Google Labs level.

Some Picasa Images Finally 4 OSX only at GOOG_Labs Level!

Look at that Google Employee Desktop with Chrome!

2009 old + new media economics

Posted by Ben Barren on January 5, 2009 – 1:05 pm

Filed under Film, Web 1.0, blogging

So u have movies about old people being born and getting younger only to die, and similarly the biggest blockbuster is bout a dog that grown men reportedly cry the last half hour for. But the economics and talent of blockbusters is fascinating (as are Benjamin Button number$) via Slash Film :

“Marley & Me (Fox) remains the canine king of the box office with an estimated $24M for a new 11-day cume of $106.51M. The blockbuster status of Marley & Me also adds to the rising star of director David Frankel. A decade ago, he won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short for Dear Diary, and then he “cut his teeth” in television on shows like Band of Brothers and Entourage. Now he has successfully delivered back-to-back $100M grossing films with Marley quickly following 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada ($124.7M cume), another movie based on a meteoric bestseller. Any producer who owns the rights to a hot-selling novel should have Frankel at the top of their list of potential directors. (As an aside, Frankel’s father was a longtime editor of the New York Times.)”

While on media economics, AdAge, with Gawker happily chipping in, are wondering if in 2009 Huffington Post is worth $2m or the $200m valuation they’d prefer; “That $200 million figure first appeared in a Brian Stelter piece in The New York Times last spring.” According to one person who was briefed on discussions but was not permitted to speak for attribution,” Stelter wrote, “the company has at least looked at the value of the site if it were put up for sale, and a figure around $200 million was used.” Amazingly, that number actually gained currency, though anybody with basic math skills and a halfway-decent bullshit detector knew the figure was nonsense, even before the economy melted down. Consider, for starters, HuffPo’s revenue. As Nat reported, from January through August of last year — the site’s most-trafficked year — “the site collected just $302,000 in ad revenue, according to an estimate from TNS Media Intelligence.”

2008 internet industry stats r wak.

Posted by Ben Barren on January 3, 2009 – 10:03 pm

Filed under Web 1.0

The top level stats are pretty scary for the internet sector for 2008 via the always good Burnham’s Beat : “Internet stocks outperformed the market in 2008, albeit in the wrong direction. Overall, the internet sector declined -52.2% during 2008 vs. the NASDAQ’s -40.5% decline and the S&P 500’s -38.5% decline. Out of 128 year-end stocks in the sector, the average stock declined by -52.3% and the median stock declined by -56.2% indicating that declines were pretty well balanced across small and large cap Internet stocks. It’s interesting to note that Google, which accounts for a whopping 41% of the sector’s capitalization was down 56%, slightly more than average, which means that Google actually underperformed the Internet sector as a whole. Believe it or not, but only 4 Internet stocks or just 3% of the total managed to post a gain in 2008. That means that 60% of the Top 10 performing Internet stocks of 2008 actually lost money.”

Amazon Saturdays + Major Histocompatibility Complexes

Posted by BB on December 20, 2008 – 12:11 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Web 1.0

So it’s that last Saturday calm before XMAS. Strange feeling. Just watched the gettn award buzz Michelle Williams Wendy and Lucy, (watch it ere) kinda a smaller brooding female lead (that stays alive) version of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, well in so far as its a Road Movie to Alaska.

My Random Saturday Reads.

Seeking Alpha - Internet Stock Report : “My DCF price target based on a WACC of 10% an a 3% terminal growth rate produces a price target of $65. Using a reasonable 12x EBITDA multiple (EBITDA growing 18% over next 3yrs) to my 2010 EBITDA estimate yields a price target of $63. My model has Amazon generating $2.10 in GAAP EPS in 2010, but let us be conservative and round that down to $2.00, then applying the current trading multiple of 30x to that figure would yield a price target of $60.”

The Economist think they have solved the science of gender attraction : “The correlation is with the genes of what is known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This region of the genome encodes part of the immune system. It turns out that one of the most important aspects of mate choice in mammals, humans included, is to make sure that your mate’s MHC is different from your own. Mixing up MHCs makes the immune system more effective. The MHC is also thought to act as a proxy for general outbreeding, with all the hybrid vigour that can bring. Fortunately, then, evolution has equipped mammals with the ability to detect by smell chemicals whose concentrations vary with differences in the MHC of the producer… Women, it seems, choose not the kind of smell they would like on a partner, or even one that might mask a nasty odour of their own, but rather something that matches their MHC. In other words, they are advertising their own scent.”

OK - I’m goin to get a cawfee at Balnarring - i’m waiting for The Wire Season 3 to leech as I have watched Seasons 1+2 again this week (and have S04-5 as well thx to mad men swap with @mnods, thx) Also watching Summer Heights High for first time (now its on HBO, im fascinated what Americans think of this show ? I’ve actually really enjoyed S01 Kath + Kim US version after first couple eps.. anyway i post 140 chars digress) As Dave Fincher says about his next film about a foodie starring Keanu : ““It’s really about the creative process. It’s truly an aromatic art-form, making food. I love that idea.””