Niklas Zennstrom, one of the co-founders of Skype, is officially out of the company as CEO, an all-but-certain outcome given the poor performance of Skype within its eBay corporate home and the public clucks of disapproval by eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Michael van Swaaij, eBay's Chief Strategy Officer, will become acting CEO.
Zennstrom and co-founder Janus Friis and other key stockholder walked away with $530 million under an earn-out agreement that originally called for paying the Skype guys $1.7 billion if Skype met certain targets.
It's clar that those targets won't ever be met. eBay is also posting a $900 million impairment charge on the $4.1 billion acquisition, announced in late-2005.
Not coincidentally, Joost, the online video start-up also founded by Zennstrom and Friis, is releasing its platform to the general public today. My guess: Zennstrom and Friis mentally checked out of Skype, and into Joost, once the eBay deal closed and the once-promising P2P VoIP provider just fizzled inside eBay.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:08 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Techmeme is a blogging phenomenon that is the constantly changing bible of what's important in the tech blogosphere and business press. Thousands of bloggers, me included, and journalists check this invaluable aggregator multiple times per day (or as Mathew Ingram confesses, even hourly).
Even more impressive is the fact that Techmeme is the brainchild of a single guy, Gabe Rivera, who built up his empire of aggregators (including the equally addictive and totally time-wasting gossip site Wesmirch) with no staff and no start-up capital. Techmeme is purportedly now worth $4 to $6 million to Gabe if he were in the mood to sell.
Gabe is kicking up the value of his site even further with a new service called the Leaderboard, which will list the top 100 blogs and sites based not on inbound links, a la Technorati's top 100, but on Techmeme's own secret sauce, which includes objective algorithms along with other, unspecified criteria.
That's great for Techmeme and the lucky Leaderboard "blogs" (not all are blogs -- 33% are top news sources such as The New York Times) but an ego blow for everybody else who doesn't make it onto the Leaderboard. In fact, as some observers have noted, the Leaderboard might just solidify and (ultimately calcify) the blogosphere's "echo chamber" by proclaiming only 100 sources as the most important.
Granted, the 100 sites will theoretically fluctuate every 30 days based on how often the sites' headlines land on Techmeme. But, as Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb (a Leaderboard and Technorati 100 site already) notes, the Leaderboard may just end up becoming a self-perpetuating thing:
That's a fine thing to measure in 30 day increments, but it's also important to acknowledge that not all blogs are equal in Techmeme. It is a black box, but it certainly appears that some big blogs carry a whole lot more weight than others. If my personal blog links to some one else's blog post, that post will not be shot onto Techmeme. If TechCrunch, Engadget or Read/WriteWeb link to some one's blog post, the journey for that blog post to make it to Techmeme is going to be a whole lot shorter.
The threshold for some blogs to make it onto Techmeme is much lower than it is for most others. That means that this metric of headline leadership over 30 days may be a self-perpetuating matter. You were on Techmeme a lot because you're on Techmeme a lot.
I'm hoping that the Leaderboard doesn't come to dominate Techmeme's value. We already know that TechCrunch and Gigaom and Engadget and ReadWriteWeb and Robert Scolbe exist and are important. And frankly, as great as those sites and bloggers are, they're wrong, or boring or self-referential some times, as any source can be.
The real value of Techmeme is its ability to pull from across the vast (English-speaking) Internet and put into tight capsules a diversity of opinion, news and analysis in a convenient one-stop-shop location. The Leaderboard, although truly an enhancement to Techmeme as well as a PR boon for the selected sites, runs counter to that great, big tent approach of Techmeme.
On the other hand, it's nice to have an alternative way of gauging a site's "importance" aside from Technorati or the badly messed-up Alexa. All this is merely pre-Leaderboard launch speculation, however. Let's see what happens after it launches tomorrow and, even more importantly, after it updates thirty days later.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:45 PM | Print | Comments (2)The phone companies are doing all they can to look like control-freaks these days. First, AT&T censored the political comments of Pearl Jam during a live webcast, then Verizon refused to sell a text message service to Naral. Both companies quickly backtracked from those decisions in the face of public outcry, but now, or so it appears, even individual customers of these companies are subject to editing, or worse, silencing...if those consumer diss the telcos themselves.
Broadband Reports notes that AT&T has a new clause in its terms of service that states AT&T will cut off your Internet service if you trash talk the company.
"AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes... tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."
The Consumerist (via Om) says that Verizon has a comparable clause in its acceptable use policy.
3. You may NOT use the Service as follows:...(j) to damage the name or reputation of Verizon, its parent, affiliates and subsidiaries, or any third parties.
I doubt if anybody has ever been cut-off from service by either telco for violating this provision. It's also possible that this might simply be boilerplate language that lots of companies use in their customer contracts, although Comcast doesn't have this kind of language in its user agreement, nor, it seems, does Time Warner Cable.
But the mere threat of losing Internet or any other communication access if you diss your phone company is utterly ridiculous. I suggest that some smart people with AT&T and Verizon broadband accounts test the waters on this one by setting up a blog that does nothing but criticize AT&T or Verizon. Force 'em to either shut you down, which would spark a public outcry, or force them to fail to enforce this aspect of their user agreements, which could serve to undercut any legal argument they might have in the event they ever do shut down a squawky customer.
Update: John 'CZ' Czwartacki, who is kept busy these days defending Verizon, has this post on Verizon's Policy Blog that explains (sort of) the telco's prohibition against talking badly about the company. He writes:
The provision is meant to cover clearly illegal acts that would include things such as impersonating Verizon to conduct phishing scams or to sell services using our name, or the intentional spreading inaccurate information that significantly harms Verizon.
"[I]t’s obvious that we do not disconnect the service of people who criticize us or our services," C.Z. writes. That's a good clarification...it's just unnerving that the prohibition is written far more broadly than its intended meaning.
My good and kind friend Gary Arlen dropped me a line last night to let me know that the opening chalkboard gag in "The Simpsons" was Bart Simpson writing "The Wall Street Journal is Better Than Ever." A very, very clever inside-the-News-Corp. family joke that pokes fun at the fears of what will happen to the world's greatest newspaper now that Rupert Murdoch is in charge.
Of course it could also be the case, as Gary suggested to me, that the Simpsons' writers were sucking up to Fox management, but I don't think so. It's a subversive way of acknowledging what everybody thinks will happen to the Journal, namely that it will slide into tabloid sensationalism with a right-wing tilt.
In any event, I hunted for an image of the chalkboard or a replay of the episode in question, entitled "The Homer of Seville," but struck out. The Simpsons is simply not available online, on either a free or paid basis. I did find, amazingly, this Wikipedia episode synopsis (the episode is a new one) that flags the "Wall Street Journal is Better Than Ever" gag, but couldn't find an image.
So, applying my fairly weak image creation skills, I created the following mock-up of what the gag must have looked like. A kind soul who shall remain nameless sent me an actual still of the chalkboard gag. Thanks!
In an interesting bit of synchronicity, two of my favorite artistic enjoyments became available to me yesterday on a pay-what-you-want basis. First, the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, DC held its inaugural "pay-what-you-can" performance, a truly clever interpretation of "Taming of the Shrew."
This generosity is not surprising for the patron-funded arts organization, which also extends complimentary standing room-only admission as well as $10 student tickets for performances that typically cost from $23 to $50, prices that are nonetheless bargains for live theater.
What is more surprising is the second incident of pay-what-you-will. Radiohead, the Brit-rock, indie-alternative band, announced yesterday that it will directly release its new album as a digital download on its own website, allowing fans to pay what they want.
Indeed, the shopping basket check-out option on the Radiohead website leaves blank the price of the new 10-song album, "In Rainbows," with a question mark next to the empty price that, when clicked, says "It's Up to You." That statement also has a question mark next to it that, when clicked, says, "No Really. It's Up to You."
Radiohead, which hasn't released an album since 2003 and is currently without a record label, is clearly pushing the envelope in online music sales, skipping altogether the hot sites for music downloads (Radiohead has never released its music via iTunes) and going directly to fans. Not only that, but the band is also banking on fans to pay a "fair" price for the music.
My guess is that Radiohead, which tends to appeal to, well, educated, thoughtful people, may very well succeed with this experiment given the nature of its fan base. As was the case (unfortunately) with the "pay-what-you-can" Shakespeare Theater performance yesterday, (the audience was filled primarily with seemingly prosperous theatergoers who probably could afford to pay full ticket prices), Radiohead's albums will likely be downloaded by those who can pay reasonably close to prevailing music download prices.
Radiohead will probably come out ahead with this gambit, particularly given that the group is also selling a collectors-type physical version of the album that costs $82. And it won't have to split the revenues with a record label.
But, Radiohead's example won't likely fit many other types of bands and although interesting, isn't likely to be replicated for truly mass appeal musicians. Big pop acts (say, Justin Timberlake) couldn't afford to follow this example. For one thing, record labels are usually involved. For another, even if record companies weren't calling the shots, too much money would be left on the table if millions of fans were allowed to dictate prices. That's probably not the case with Radiohead.
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