Recently, I’ve found myself in a series of meetings in both the Silicon Valley and in Israel with technologists, media people, and venture capitalists – all of whom seem to be equally despondent about the state of the online advertising start-up. The online advertising industry is in the final stages of consolidation, they argue, technology [...]
Tagged Internet, Online AdvertisingA few days ago, a video from the always-entertaining Gary Vaynerchuk caught my eye. The video is of a talk Vaynerchuk gave back in October at The Booksmith, a San Francisco bookshop. The entire hour-long talk is worth watching, but the first twenty minutes are enough to get the point across. Vaynerchuk rose to fame [...]
Tagged Boxee, foxytunes, Gary Vaynerchuk, Internet, online musicThe public launch of Sense of Fashion, an online community centered on fashion expression and commerce, has been ably covered by my good friend Kfir Pravda and by TechCrunch. The company is still in early days, but I believe it has the potential to turn into something big. I’ve been following the company for a [...]
Tagged eCommerce, Internet, Sense of FashionThe Wall Street Journal offered extensive coverage today of Google’s decision back in February to exit the off-line radio advertising business. This isn’t the first time one of Google’s many growth initiatives has failed to achieve the hoped-for results, nor does this particular failure expose a fatal flaw in Google’s extraordinarily scalable business model. It [...]
Tagged Comscore, Dunnhumby, Google, Homescan, Internet, Nielsen, Online Advertising, Technology, yahooLast week, T-Mobile Germany made some waves by banning Skype for the iPhone. Some might read this as a long overdue reassertion of operator power, but I disagree. A few months ago, I learned from a reliable source that a major operator was deliberately not shipping a very popular mobile phone model that they knew [...]
Tagged Internet, Mobile, wifiI woke up this morning to a post on TechCrunch about an impending Google acquisition of Twitter. Jeff Pulver, a Twitter investor, offered his perspective on his blog, and Ouriel Ohayon wrote it up as well. It’s become very clear that Twitter is a runaway success. There are lots of reasons for this, but I [...]
Tagged Google, Internet, microsoft, twitter, wix, yahooA friend of mine sent me this blog post by Rafe Needleman about TimeBridge, an Israeli start-up backed by Mayfield and Norwest Venture Partners. TimeBridge offers a solution for meeting scheduling that integrates nicely with Outlook and Google Calendar. It allows users to share calendar information with each other and easily schedule meetings. I’ve downloaded, [...]
Tagged media, Online Advertising, TimeBridgeBack in November, I attended Ad:Tech New York, one of the key online advertising conferences. Back then, I wasn’t blogging, and now it’s too late for a detailed review of the conference to be meaningful. But I do want to share one insight because I often think about it when I’m meeting companies. I call [...]
Tagged 5min, advertising, CommissionVideos, Internet, kontera, Online Advertising, qoof, Video, Voxant NewsroomToday, Hulu reminded us who’s the boss. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Hulu had pulled its content from TV.com and Boxee, which is a venture-backed Israeli company. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar explained the decision on the corporate blog arguing that content providers requested the move. He wrote, honestly I’m sure, that “the [...]
Tagged Boxee, content, Hulu, Television, VideoOn Monday, Levi Shapiro gave a great talk on mobile applications and advertising at a roundtable hosted by my firm, Genesis Partners. A few takeaways from the session at Genesis: Mobile 1.0 is over. Among US wireless subscribers, penetration of mobile games (6%), audio (12%), and premium SMS (5%) has been flat or down for [...]
Tagged Apple, AppStore, Nokia