Will the financial crisis filter out the web2.0 start up ?

Obviously when the stock market crashes, don't expect too much to get easy funding for your new start up. actually even what we could consider as success stories could be impacted. Dailymotion and netvides are under pressure and one could easily predict that only killer app will survive the down turn. On the one side, we could be glad to get only the best surviving, but on the other side it will definitely slow down the innovation cycle we could expect with trends like RIA or growth of the online spending. Who'll survive will live for long !

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

First online live broadcsting of a football game in Belgium

Standard - Everton was live broadcasted on the rtlinfo web site (member of the RTL group). It's a unique experience in the Belgian media landscape and I must admit I was quite happy. I did watch the game from Goteborg in Sweden for and it was a great home feeling. It's also worth noticing that RTL didn'tforeseen to monetize the TV ad display over the internet. Net result for the online audience during the TV ad : open micro with privatejokes from the RTL team, funny live shoots while waiting an on AIR slot, scripting of the discussion for the second half and so on... The only ad we get for this live broacast - a introducing ad video and 2 footer display banners...Talking about Itv ?...Many opportunities for improvement :-)

LinkedIn to launch their own Ad Network

LinkedIn already sells ads against this audience on its own site, targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. Now, it will expand that targeting to other partner sites. Publishers will have to apply to become part of the ad network, but LinkedIn will probably try to sign up some of its existing content partners such as the Businessweek, CNBC, and the New York Times... and why not business to business publishers like Wolters Kluwer.

LinkedIn knows it has a valuable audience (see the demographic presentation here), and now wants to sell access to that audience to others. Although LinkedIn will always make more money off the ads it shows on its own site (since it doesn’t have to split those ads three ways with Collective Media and the partner sites). Perhaps LinkedIn realizes that it will never become a big enough site on its own to justify its recent $1 billion valuation. (Although employees can only sell shares at a $500 million valuation). This will create incremental revenues for LinkedIn. And for publishing site partners it offers a potentially more lucrative set of remnant inventory that it can throw ads up against.

Source : Techcrunch France

And now Chrome...

What to say about this new Google initiative? Chrome is mainly build on the Mozilla basements and they (accidentally?) launched Chrome one week after announcing the sponsoring of the Mozilla foundation for about 57mio USD. I don't believe Google wanted to kick ass in the browser field, the trends is much more deepth than that. They are launching more and more SaaS applications and the browser is becoming the new operating system for the google native generation. Chrome sounds to me like a cement in a strategy to lock user on the "Google Operating System". We'll see what the future will looks like and surely how the hardware will evolve because today google is launching a browser for aPC, tomorrow I don't know what google will launch on a PSP like device :-).

While Google is on the spotlight, Yahoo release it's own desktop

ps: the image was found on rue89

Is LinkedIn really worth a billion ?????

Linkedin get another roundtable finalized with Bain Capital Ventures and a PR campaign orchestrated from those new executive Board members.

Mash up model - Buzz around Xobni

A mash up is extending the capabilities of an application, usually you mash up application together to create your own application. It's a powerful technique for web site publisher s to improve the capabilities of their own service, the flip side though is that revenue of the used application is not not always shared with the integrator... That might be why is not so popular in the professional publishing industry but well used by entrepreneurs that want to increase their traffic.

Having said that, I need you to test and add-on, which is close to a mash up in the sense that it's adding capabilities to an application. Interesting about the one I need you for, Xobni, is that it's an add-on for outlook that automate the classification of your inbox in a GMAIL style. It's using a viral technique to promote the launch of their beta (again the beta syndrome I mentioned previously!) and I can be invited quicker if you click on the button and sign in for the free account... So please, act now ! You are one click away of participating in a viral action :-)


Thanks

Business Model evolution in the music industry

2007 is a cornerstone year in the music industry. Various business model have been tested and I guess that 2008 will see some trends emerging. Let's take the Radiohead example, no figure have been officially released but simply the fact that a well established band can produce, market and distribute his own music is already a revolution. The perception of the workload (and cost) is not always reflected in the price the people wanted to give away for the In Rainbow Record (average of 2.5£). Now that this action is closed and that the album is regularly distributed through I-tunes and XL recording, I'm wondering if it was just not a marketing action....

Madonna is another example, she signed an all in contract with the concert promoter Live Nation (Clear Channel), valued at 120m$ for 3 albums, concert organization, selling merchandising and Licensing her name. That contract is also unique because behind live Nation, clear channel owns a full supply chain for the music industry from Radio to ticketing and venue. The value add of such deal for Clear Channel is huge !

The open source model is also applicable for another segment of artists. Smaller artists (in term of audience ,not in term of quality !) can benefit from free distribution and social platform like Jamendo with their 2530.000+ users to create a buzz and get noticed by professionals.

To conclude, many other alternative where elaborated but in essence to go back to the primary objective of this blog (publishing industry), the value chain is not changing in the music industry. The content (the music itself) is more and more accessible for free on the web and the value added of the actors need to be refine to establish new business models. Orgnaization like the Rolling Stone (not sure if I can still call them band :-) needs a new record to promote a worldwide tour, the money is defenitely not generated by that new album. I can see similar trend in the publishing industry, the information is more and more available for free and adaptation are needed to monetize new value added.